Even though we can use our mental skills to try to find correct answers, it seems argumentation, for power and for bonding, is indeed a very important aspect to consider. But this does not mean we aim to win every discussion. The very purpose of winning a discussion is to have others agreeing with us. Therefore, argumentation only makes sense in a context where people try to arrive at some kind of consensus.
Asch experiment points exactly at that. When the group exerted its pressure over people, they were not observed to argument, but to accept the view of the others. The pressure to conform was strong enough that even a trivial task could end in an erroneous answer. It is worth, at this point, to remember the effect known as irrational consistency. In this case, when people hold a specific belief, they tend to also believe in a complete set of logically independent assumptions in a way that they all support their main belief. While this makes no sense if one's objective is only to hold beliefs as close to the truth as possible (the best action or policy or choice is usually the best one for a set of reasons but also despite a number of problems it might be associated with), it makes perfect sense if the objective is defend a point of view and to conform with a group of people with similar ideas.
It seems we are not really so much interested in truth as we are at confirming our beliefs. We can see people using strategies on a daily basis built to avoid cognitive dissonance, to avoid finding ideas that they disagree with. Recently, my wife shared a post in a social media where a number of Brazilian religious leaders were mocked. These individuals openly request money from their followers (usually poor people who could really have better uses for the money) in exchange for the goodwill of their god. They claim that they could cure diseases easily. Since at the time she posted it, an outbreak of ebola was (and still is, as I write it) treatening several countries in Africa, it would be only logical for someone who cared about the welfare of people and who genuinely possessed healing powers to use those powers at serious diseases we still don't have the cure for. The post, therefore, suggested three known religious leaders should head to the ebola region to treat the disease.
The tone was one of irony but, if the belief those individuals claim were true and they actually believed that, the suggestion was indeed not more than the logical consequence of those beliefs. The fact that there is something is fishy in this situation, however, is perceived by everyone. And a friend of my wife, who follows the same denomination, complained about the generalization of the post, where all leaders were basically described as liars. I couldn't help myself from joining the discussion. What is interesting is that, as soon as I just entered it with a joking remark, before I could actually reason about the problem, she decided to stop the discussion, to prevent possible damages to our relationship (we never met in person) and deleted her entries to the discussion. Including the post where she told she was leaving the discussion, I was only able to read the post because the comment was sent to my email account. When I actually logged to the site, planning to point out the proposal was actually the logical conclusion for her own beliefs, I could no longer see anything from her.
This refusal to debate things that make us uncomfortable is a very common effect. As a matter of fact, it is commonplace to even advise people to avoid discussions about politics, religion, or sports. When, obviously, if you were interested on finding out the truth instead of winning arguments, talking about those issues and, far more importantly, finding out about the facts and the competent analysis in those subjects, albeit how rare they might be, should be on your list of priorities. But we take disagreements as personal attacks (if I had to guess, I'd say that taking disagreement as personal offense is a problem that is even more serious among supposedly well educated people, such as lecturers in academic positions), and we use faulty reasoning whenever the conclusion feels like it would support us and we can get away with it.
It seems we indeed need something much better than our reasoning natural talents if we ever aim to find the best, correct answers.
