Be Mindful of Socialized Observations

My wife and I went on our first-ever cruise last year, at the time that the House Intelligence Committee began its historic public hearings on the impeachment inquiry of President Trump. We were both deeply interested in the hearings and were surprised to find that for most of the time on the ship we were in a dead zone for internet and live television coverage. There was cable news available on the television in our room, but it was day-old and only came on late in the afternoon.

As we learned, the late afternoon tends to be downtime when cruise passengers rest in their rooms after tiring excursions or a day at the pool. It is also a time when it is fairly normal to share a cocktail or two with traveling partners in anticipation of the evening’s activities.

Imagine our frustration when, with cocktails in hand, we discovered that only two cable news networks were offered on the ship: MSNBC, an organization known for its liberal-leaning politics and perceived support of the Democratic Party, and FOX NEWS, an organization known for its conservative-leaning politics and perceived support of the Republican Party. It was astonishing to listen to a FOX NEWS anchor report on an event that occurred in the hearings as profound evidence that President Trump is a victim of a conspiracy, and then flip the station to MSNBC and hear the same event described as equally profound evidence that President Trump is a villain. Political divisiveness, i.e., victim or villain and nothing in between, that is what we were left with over cocktails.

Unable to view the actual hearings, we could not form our own opinions, rather we had to filter through (1) the motivations and (2) the biases of the networks and their anchors in order to determine what actually occurred. My wife asked, “Which one of them is lying? I responded, “It depends on the context that you bring to the situation”. She replied, “Come on Al; can’t you park the leadership stuff while we’re on vacation?” That hurt a little.

As to context, let us start first with the motivation of the networks. It is important to remember that both networks are commercial enterprises. Meaning, they are motivated to make money. They have owners and shareholders who want an economic return on their investment. Each network seeks distinctiveness, in an extremely competitive market, in order to attract advertisers who pay for commercials, and for subscription revenue from other cable and streaming companies. They gain this distinctiveness by creating a brand image that draws and retains viewers. The brand also attracts employees and other investors who subscribe to the values represented by the brand. Over time these employees become managers in their companies and the brand values become intertwined into a persona, if not a social role as an “ideological force for good” for the viewers, employees, managers, and investors whose beliefs align with the brand values.

Bottom line: in today’s extremely competitive market for reporting “the news”, it is good business for news-media companies to be branded as either conservative-or liberal-leaning. And once the brand is established, compromising it by reporting news that conflicts with the brand identity is bad business. Prior to internet-driven social media, balanced news reporting was a profitable business. As noted by social commentator, Scott Adams, that business model was displaced when technology advanced to the point that media companies could measure which content attracted and influenced the most viewership – and thus made it possible to measure the profitability of different approaches to reporting news. Now there are hundreds if not thousands of sources of news on cable stations, network stations, and the internet – and having a distinctive brand identity is essential for survival.

You might think at this point that I am suggesting that the media intentionally misrepresent the news. Surely the executives of these companies assert that they provide balanced editorial content, and they believe as such. That brings us to the second aspect of context, biases.

Our brains create mental models from a lifetime of observations that subconsciously drive our beliefs and decision-making. As a result, truth and reality are subjective and have a lot to do with how, where, and with whom we lived our lives up to that point in time. For example, if a person only watches FOX NEWS, the reporting of that network will over time become socialized in the person and among those others within their network of relationships. The same occurs for someone who only watches MSNBC. This socialization has an organic personification – it is like a pandemic of biases.

The granddaddy of all biases was defined in the late 1950s by psychologist Leon Festinger in a theory he called Cognitive Dissonance. He theorized that a person will experience stress if they hold contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values, which is not sustainable for healthy mental functioning. Unconsciously, they will eliminate contradictory information (observations) or reframe it in order to achieve internal congruence. This reframing can extend to their own actions as the brain strives for self-justification.

The more a person or community has riding on a judgment, the more likely they are to unconsciously manipulate, attend to, or ignore the information. For example, many state governors have ordered people to stay at home and businesses to close their doors in order to avoid the spread of the nasty COVID-19 virus. A colleague, Leanne Atwater, observed that people have quite different reactions to these stay at home orders. Some believe they are extremely prudent; others think they are a gross over-reaction and others are convinced that they are a violation of human rights. The position any individual takes on the issue is highly influenced by the factors we mentioned earlier. Who are they listening to among the many contradictory voices? What information do they choose to ignore or reframe and why? What is at stake for them personally (e.g., family situation, personal health, financial situation)? What are their values, ideologies, and political beliefs?

This example illustrates that each of us is prone to self-justification through cognitive dissonance, meaning that our observations can be selective and, even then, we can unconsciously reframe them to fit our political, ideological, or value-based beliefs. Moreover, we socialize the observations of others including what is reported to us through whatever media outlets we frequent. As noted above, these media outlets are influenced by profitability goals and the motivations and cognitive dissonance of their owners, managers, and employees. If we are not mindful of these socialized observations, the likelihood of making good decisions in our life is quite low.

We also need to be mindful of algorithms utilized by online social networks like Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. Algorithms are automated calculations, imperceptible by users, created by social media companies to feed paid advertisements and free content to users based on what they have shown interest in. Content is prioritized based on the extent of the user’s online engagement with specific friends, family members, online purchases, videos watched, sites they have clicked on, and content searches they have made in the past. As a result, the algorithms can create an “echo chamber” where users see prioritized content from like-minded people and online media sources. As noted in the documentary, The Social Dilemma, algorithms tend to create gradual, slight, and imperceptible changes in the user’s behavior and perception, in what can become a “cocoon” supported by the following cognitive and social biases:

• The Availability Bias – we think that whatever we heard or read about most recently is more common or more important than it actually is, making our judgments and opinions biased toward the latest news or information.
• The Extremity Bias – we share (and are shared by others) the most extreme version of any story, making a positive story glowing and a negative one horrific. Our tendency is to think that extreme things that come readily to mind are more common or important than they really are.
• The Confirmation Bias – we observe information that confirms our pre-existing views and ignore information that does not. This bias is exacerbated in social media when people are bucketed and fed information that conforms to whatever they have searched for in the past, creating polarized communities with divergent views of reality.

Think about this complex question? In a world where we are (1) driven by self-justification, (2) cocooned by a plethora of cognitive and social biases into communities of divergent realities, and (3) influenced by imperceptible algorithms created by commercially-driven social media companies, is it possible for us to make good decisions? Yes, is the answer – but it takes effort. The first step is to give yourself permission to be aware of how socialized observations are affecting your version of reality. For many, this first step is the hardest.