Imperfect Cognitions

The Centre for Philosophical Psychology at the University of Antwerp held a workshop on the 27th November 2018 on the topic of belief and belief formation. Here’s a brief summary of the excellent talks given at the workshop, kindly written by Dan Williams . Neil Levy (Oxford/Macquarie) gave the first talk, entitled ‘Not so hypocritical after all: how we change our minds without noticing’. Levy focused on a phenomenon that many people assume to be a form of hypocrisy—namely, cases in which individuals come to change their beliefs about, say, politics when popular opinion (or the popular opinion within their relevant tribe or coalition) changes. (Levy gave the example of many ‘Never Trumpers’ who then apparently changed their opinion of Trump when he came to power). Levy argued that at least some examples of this phenomenon are in fact not best understood as a form of hypocrisy; rather, they arise from people forming beliefs “rationally”. Specifically, he drew attention to...

Today's post is by Elliot Aronson (pictured below), Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of California Santa Cruz, and author of The Social Animal and Mistakes Were Made (but not by me) , with Carol Tavris. Social psychologists define hypocrisy as behaving contrary to one’s values or beliefs; in common vernacular, it can be defined as the failure to practice what one preaches. I think that just about everybody wants to see themselves as a person of integrity. It is a very powerful desire that transcends individual differences due to age, gender, race, socio-economic status, and nationality. This quest to maintain a self-image of integrity is quite touching; at the same time, it often distorts our memory or causes us to stretch to find justifications for actions that might appear hypocritical. Thus, it is far easier to see hypocrisy in others than it is to see it in oneself. If there are individual differences they lie not in the ability to behave hypo...