Let me ask you a question: What is the percentage of moslems in the Australian population today? Your answer: ____ %. And the follow up: what is the likely percentage of moslems in Australia in 4 years? Your answer: ____ %. (See below.)
More than ever we have access to information about people and events. But volume is no substitute for quality of information. And certainly, the skills of critical examination of information have never been in stronger demand. But are we up for it?
For a critical look at data, information and perception, including the effects of social media, I strongly recommend the book The Perils of Perception by Bobby Duffy. It’s a cracker! It leads to some great questions of self-reflection and accountability.
For instance, how aware are we of the assumptions and misconceptions that form our attitudes about great issues in our own country and elsewhere on the globe? Are we forming deep convictions based on half-truths, even falsehoods?
How conscientious are we in learning the facts before settling on a point of view? How open are we to changing our mind once we find that the information we had relied on was faulty?
In all of this, you may wish to consider where you stand among the behaviours and capabilities of your fellow human beings. The chances are that you will consider yourself better than average—this will be taken against all people and on any subject. You will have a social desirability bias—a deep-seated need to make yourself look good, give a positive impression; and you will give the responses you think are expected of you.
This is all about hiding your own bad behaviour and also about impression management. It will cause a significant gap between what you say and what you have actually done (or are like to do in the future). It will also cause great distortions in surveys when any of the questions involve self-image.
Take for instance, survey attempts to predict your voting intentions or your stance on drug taking, death and dying, and other key social issues; or more telling—your eating habits, your sex life, your attitude to race, religion or politics.
Aggregated evidence gathered by Duffy’s organisation, the global polling firm Ipsos, points unerringly to our unreliability as objective witnesses to life in general. We impose too many filters on information coming in and our responses going out.
Most entertaining are the bar graphs depicting the gap between people’s guesses and the objective data, aggregated into by-country profiles.
It is also puzzling, and perhaps disconcerting, that when confronted with the factual data, most people seek to justify their original answer and even strengthen their hold on the misconception.
The implication is that facts rarely cut through our partisan beliefs, and therefore mostly do not affect people’s choices or behaviours. We tenaciously hold onto our preconceived ideas; we are averse to changing our minds, even in the face of facts to the contrary!
Answers from the first paragraph: Moslems represent 2.4% of the Australian population today. (The average guess by respondents was 12%.) The proportion of moslems in Australia in 4 years is 3%. (Average guess: 21%!) Were your responses as wildly astray as the above? If so, what does that tell you about you?
To me, the book points to 2 things in particular:
How do we bring about change? Do we put aside the facts entirely and deal on an emotional level only? Do all big questions get decided on an appeal like the chocolate bar at the checkout—the impulse purchase with a minimum of critical evaluation?
How do we teach/learn about being objective observers i.e. how to distil the flood of messages that come at us every day through multiple platforms? How do we pause from our reflex responses, consider and choose what may be a change in our behaviour?
Something that they don’t seem to consider is the source of a “fact”. People will usually decide on the credibility of a source and then accept or reject what he or she is saying, rather than make an objective assessment of the information itself.
Could it be that the source is more important? Is that a fact?