Group reasoning: Stereotypes, hatred, and all that

Belonging to a group is a powerful motivator in people actions and also in how they understand the world they live in.  Our social tendencies, our desire to live among equals are very obvious and have some positive consequences. But they also help the drawing of many of the arbitrary lines that divide us, like nation or race.


In his 'The Lucifer Principle , Howard Bloom presents two interesting examples of creating enemies as a way to gain support and power. He tells how Orville Faubus created a bogeyman, inventing a story where he claimed the black population in Little Fork was getting ready for violence when the schools would open, finally forced to integrate black and white students by a Supreme Court decision. Meanwhile, Faubus incited the violence and, by blaming in on the black people, he was able to be elected and re-elected until he decided to retire. A similar strategy was used by Fidel Castro, in order to get the Cuban people to follow his rule. In more recent examples, it is not even necessary to look hard to see how both sides in the Western versus Muslim societies "conflict'' gain the hearts and minds of the people inside each group simply by pointing at the other group as outsiders, as them, basically not granting the same humanity that the group "we'' belong to has.


Dave Grossman's 'On Killing analyses the question of how soldiers deal with the killing they are forced to inflict. While the book has serious problems in his analysis of historical cases (extending the morality of present time to the past and using too few information sources), it points to some interesting, if incomplete, data about the behavioral  of soldiers in our more recent wars. Typically, it seems that, in our modern society, most soldiers would naturally avoid firing their weapons and, when they do, they prefer to aim higher than the heads of their opponents. But this tendency can be trained away and techniques of dehumanizing the enemy already exist. Among them, simply attacking from far in a way where soldiers can aim at objects (tanks, for example) instead of human beings, can make it much easier to avoid the horrible feelings many of us would have from taking someone else's life.


Hatred is indeed a powerful element in how we deal differently with ingroup relations as opposed to outgroup ones. Eran Halperin et al, while studying Israeli-Jewish adults, have observed that hatred is indeed even more important to establishing of political intolerance than other strong inducers of intolerance, such as perceived threat.


Sullivan and Transue, in a review of previous research on political tolerance, observed some rather troublesome effects. For example, a previous study conducted during the McCarthy era by Samuel Stouffer, in  Communism, Conformity and Liberties, observed that an overwhelming majority of the Americans interviewed in the study were in favor of denying the political rights of free speech or participating in the political process to groups they considered a threat, such as communists or atheists. Interestingly, in this study, this tendency to deny political rights was weaker among community leaders. In a later study, James Prothro and Charles Grigg verirfied that, while their respondents actually agreed with general democratic principles such the protection of minorities, this consensus in favor of democratic practices disappeared when applied to controversial issues. The strength of tendency of not accepting divergent opinions was observed to depend on several factors, such as perceived threat, educational background, psychological attitudes and values and so on.

Group Thinking - Argumentative Theory of Reasoning II

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.

Groupthinking - Teoria Argumentativa do Raciocínio (Portuguese version of the post on Argumentative Theory of Reasoning)

Nota: Depois de ter sobrevivido a quantidade de argumentos sem conteúdo que caracterizou a eleição no Brasil, achei melhor traduzir ao menos esse e os próximos posts. Há sempre uma pequena esperança de que alguém leia, se identifique e aprenda algo. Segue a tradução do último post, que é a primeira parte do que vou escrever sobre o tópico:

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Nós somos capazes de criar coisas incríveis, seja nas Ciências, em Tecnologia, ou como Arte. Nós fomos mais longe que qualquer outro ser vivo no nosso planeta e a escala de nossas conquistar não tem rival. No entanto, como temos visto, nossa capacidade de raciocinar, ainda que bem adaptada para o meio ambiente onde nossos ancestrais viveram, tem falhas graves e, ainda que sejamos capazes de realizar muito mais quando muitos de nós se juntam para isso, comunidades também são capazes de criar novos tipos de problemas quando tentamos descobrir a verdade.

Isso sugere a pegunta: por que somos exatamente como somos? Regras lógicas não são realmente complicadas e poderiam existir dentro dos nossos cérebros com um baixíssimo custo. Por outro lado, a Lógica Clássica (que discutirei em entradas futuras) assume que algumas afirmações sejam verdadeiras e, no mundo real, nós simplesmente não podemos assumir de início que certas premissas sejam a verdade. Dessa forma, é possível que a Lógica não tem sido facilmente aplicável nas circunstâncias de nossos antepassados. Ainda assim, resta o problema de quais forças teriam guiado a evolução de nosso intelecto até o ponto atual.

Hugo Mercier e Dan Sperber  propuseram recentemente uma ideia que parece capturar ao menos um aspecto essencial da resposta. Eles observaram que nossas habilidades mentais e verbais, o que dizemos uns aos outros, não evolui para a procura da verdade. Eles sugeriram que, sendo seres sociais, nosso raciocínio evoluiu num ambiente em que, se os demais acreditassem em você, você teria mais poder e uma melhor chance de se reproduzir. Isso teria significado uma pressão evolutiva no sentido de sermos capazes de argumentar e convencer os demais, independentemente de nosso ponto de vista estar correto. Sua Teoria Argumentativa do Raciocínio (Argumentative Theory of Reasoning) afirma que nosso raciocínio existe com o propósito de nos tornar competentes em debater e convencer. O que é frequentemente bastante diferente de se chegar à resposta correta.

De fato, Mercier observou que a ideia de que raciocinamos para tornar nossos argumentos convincentes (argumentos que podem ou não ser verdadeiros) para se aplicar também a  crianças e a outras culturas.  Isso não quer dizer que não sejamos capazes de utilizar nossos intelectos na busca de soluções corretas para os problemas que encontrarmos. Quando comparamos, em uma entrada anterior, nossas habilidades de resolver os problemas lógicos formamelmente idênticos das cartas e do consumo de álcool, vimos que, nas situações que são familiares, nós éramos capazes de raciocinar de forma competente. Achar respostas melhores pode também ter contribuído para moldar nosso raciocínio. Mas a evidência de que boa parte dele evoluiu apenas para nos permitir convencer os demais é bastante convincente.

Group Thinking - Argumentative Theory of Reasoning

We can create amazing things, be it in Science, Technology, or Art. We have gone further than any other living being in our planet, the scale of our accomplishments is unparalleled, we have made changes, for better and for worse, in the whole surface of our planet. And yet, as we have seen, our reasoning, while well adapted to the environment of our ancestors, has serious flaws and, while we can sometimes achieve much more when several of us are involved, communities can also create a whole new level of problems for the problem of pursuing the truth.

So, why are we exactly the way we are? Logical rules are not really complicated and could work inside our brains almost without any cost. On the other hand, Classical Logic (we will talk about different logics in future posts) assumes some statements to be true and, in the real world, we can not simply choose some premises to be true. In that sense, it might not have been easily applicable in many circumstances. Still the question remains, what were the forces that drove the evolution of our intellect to the point we are today?

Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber recently proposed an idea that seems to capture at least one essential aspect of the answer to that question. What they observed is that our mental and verbal skills, what we say to each other, might not have evolved for the pursuit of truth. What they have proposed is that, as social beings, our reasoning evolved in an environment where, if you were believed, you would have more power and a better chance at surviving. And that meant a pressure to be able to argument well and convince people, regardless of the correctness of the underlying reasoning. Their Argumentative Theory of Reasoning states that our reasoning exists for the purpose of making us competent at debating and convincing others. And that is often not the same as arriving at the right answer.

And, as a matter of fact, Mercier observed that the idea that we reason in order to make convincing arguments (that might turn out to be true or not) seems to be applicable also for children and other cultures. All of this does not mean that we can not use our intellects to pursue correct answers to the problems we face. When comparing our abilities in the formally identical logical problems of the cards and of alcohol consumption, we have seen that, for situations we are used to, we actually reason in competent ways. Finding better answers must also have contributed to shaping our reasoning. But the evidence that a good part of it evolved simply to allow us to win arguments is quite compelling.

Group Thinking VI

Social influence, in the previous examples, was limited to the case where all participants in the group were initially treated as equals (even when the suggestion was to listen only to the most confident people, that was a characteristic determined a posteriori.). But it is not always the case. It often happens that, when we have to make a decision in a social context, one or more individuals hold a special position, for example, as bosses or as authorities in the subject.


In a very famous (and also infamous) experiment, Stanley Milgram decided to investigate how it was possible that nazism could dominate Germany, when most Germans were actually not murderous psychopaths. The setting of the experiment was simple. One scientist was at the room controlling the situation while two people, being tested, were assigned to two different roles. One of them was tied to a chair connected to a machine that could be turned on to administer electric shocks to the sitting person. The task of the second individual was to switch the button that caused the shock, when instructed.


Questions were asked to the first subject and when those questions were answered correctly, no shock was administered. However, each error was to be punished with a shock, starting at the small voltage of 15V. Each error made the shock 15V stronger than the previous one, up to a final shock of 450V.


What the second subject, who inflicted the shocks, didn't know was that no real shock was been applied and that the person tied to the chair was an actor instructed to act as if the shock was real. The actor would get some answers right and some wrong, showing just some discomfort at first. Eventually, the actor would beg for the experiment to stop, showing very clear signs of distress and pain. And the scientist would instruct the second subject to keep on with the shocks, despite those pleas.


Milgram reported that, despite many people showing signs of extreme stress while hearing the cries of pain from the actor, 65% of them kept obeying the scientist up to the maximum voltage. The experiment had several problems and can be criticized in many ways, including the serious ethical problem of the horrible psychological pain it caused to the people who kept pressing the button despite their own begging for the scientist to stop. Comparisons with nazism are indeed not exact for a series of factors and the 65% figure is actually the percentage of the experiment where most people agreed with the scientist, while other problems were reported on how well the experiment script was followed (see, per example, Behind the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments ).


Despite all those problems, and remembering that the 65% figure is almost certainly an inflated one, the experiment shows how one authority figure that we trust (a scientist conducting an experiment where we were assured nobody would actually be harmed) can make us even do actions we are viscerally opposed to. In this case, no change of opinion was actually observed, but actions were not what we would expect from normal, thinking human beings.

Group Reasoning V

The possibility of a better judgment when using groups is a tool we might want to employ, while avoiding the circumstances where phenomena like groupthink happens. That means that solid evidence on when we should expect problems and when the wisdom of crowds is expected to work on out favor is required.

Indeed, one first question that comes to mind is how strong the influence between the member of a group needs to be so that we should start to worry. Lorenz et al designed an experiment to address that question. During their experiments, they asked people to answer factual questions and, after they have expressed their opinion with no group influence, they provided information about the answers of other people. Each subject had, then, the opportunity of changing their original answer. What they observed was that, while the group was initially ``wise'' (in the sense of wisdom of crowds), the social influence tended to diminish the diversity of observed answers to such a degree that it was possible that the correct value was no longer included in the range of answers. And, despite that, the confidence of the individuals  in the social answer was increased! This shows that even weak social influence can undermine the wisdom of the crowds effect. The authors suggest that opinions should be obtained with no element of social influence in order to capture the advantages of group reasoning.

Of course, while desirable, it is not always possible to eliminate the social influence inside the group in a meaningful way. De Polavieja and collaborators, while studying this problem, have suggested that the beneficial effects of group reasoning can still be obtained, even under the presence of social effects if we just use the opinions of the very confident people, who did not change their initial opinions, despite the social pressure. Note that while groupthink can be a very powerful influence, it might not be enough to convince everyone and independent minded individuals might be able to retain the initial range of views. And, with that, the wisdom that was presented in the crowd before interaction.

Such a proposal, however, might be labeled as anti-democratic (the word democracy, unfortunately, is nowadays used even to defend positions that defend that just a small fraction of the interested parties should be listened to, arguments that use it should be read with extreme caution), depending on the context where it might be applied. The general advise to make the social influence between deciders as small as possible, however, stands. This does not mean that the different alternatives should not be presented to voters, quite the opposite. What the literature shows is that interaction between the voters should be minimum, not between the people presenting and debating the alternatives. In large societies, most voters do not interact with other, unlike the laboratory experiments and, therefore, it is not clear that groupthink will happen.

The situation is very different in committees or smaller gatherings. In this cases, the internal pressures inside the group might indeed destroy our ability to think and replace it with our desire to conform. This is not just true about the final opinions. In her work on the performance of groups and individuals, Gayle Hill also studied how the interaction might affect brainstorm sessions. What she observed was that, when people were asked to plan new ideas for a brainstorm session and bring them ready, the added independent work was consistently more creative than when the ideas were thought during a meeting.

The composition of a group is also a key factor in the quality of its reasoning. Ilan Yaniv studied how well a group was capable to avoid framing effects. Framing effects happen when people change their decisions simply because the question they had to answer was presented to them (framed) in different words. In this study, Yaniv observed that by increasing heterogeneity in the group, simply by assigning individuals to different frames, had a very strong impact on getting rid of the biases, while homogeneous groups performed much worse than individuals.

In a review of the literature in the area, Elizabeth Mannix and Margaret A. Neale discussed the benefits and problems observed under many different circumstances of increasing diversity in a groups. They concluded that there are types of heterogeneity that can make a group have problems in the areas of interpersonal attraction and liking, such as differences in race/ethnicity, gender or age. But, from an information processing point of view, diversity should be able to improve the group results, despite possible management problems it might cause. In particular, underlying, less obvious differences such as different backgrounds, education or personalities were indeed associated with improvements in performance.

The conclusion of all these experiments seem to be that there is, indeed, a lot of knowledge and intelligence in a group, but crowds are very stupid. They make mistakes individuals would rarely make.

Human Stupidity: Historical: Group Reasoning IV

The consequences of social influence that emerge from these observations are disturbing ones. I am sure that some readers might have trouble accepting, even after all the evidence presented so far on our reasoning shortcomings. But the extent to which we can be influenced by a group of people, even when that group is wrong, is something that is very well documented. In a famous experiment, Solomon Asch  proposed a very trivial question to his subjects, based on the figure bellow. 

 

The people involved in the experiment should just state which of the three lines in the right card (A, B, or C) had the same length as the line in the left card. When asked the question in the control situation, with no influence of anyone else, those who were being tested picked the correct option (line C) 99% of the times. The purpose of the experiment was to see how people would react when the information from others disagreed with their perception. In order to test it, a part of the subjects were tested in a situation where they first listened to the individual opinions of other people, who were actually actors. Those actors were instructed to provide the correct answer in some of the trials, but the wrong one (line A) in most of them. In each trial, all actors provided the same answer.

What Asch observed was that, when the actors provided the wrong answer before the individual being tested answered, this person would make the wrong choice up to 75% of the times. The effect required a minimum majority of 3 people to be observed. However, the effect did not become stronger as more actors were added, all in agreement with the wrong choice.


More recently, evidence about what might be happening inside our brains was obtained by testing the reactions of people while conducting  functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of their brains. Eisenberger et al were able to observe that, when we experience rejection, the participants showed brain activity similar to that observed when people experience real physical pain. Of course, this does not answer if people actually changed their perception of the world or if they would just agree with the majority while still somehow noticing that majority opinion was wrong.



While investigating that, Berns et al observed that both perceptual and emotional processes were involved in our brains in circumstances similar to those of the Asch experiment. Adding to that, Klucharev et al found clear evidence that our conformity to the group norms or opinions happen through learning mechanisms. This suggests that the influence of the group might actually change the way people perceive the world.



Social influence is pervasive and we are rarely aware of it. Even through social media, it was possible to detect that emotion can be contagious, without any non-verbal cues, simply by reading about the emotions of a friend. While this specific work was was criticized by the use of Facebook data without explicit user consent (implicit consent from accepting the terms of service was assumed by the authors, PNAS added a comment to the beginning of the article to point this possible problem), it highlights very clearly how we are actually influenced even with very little information.