Both liberals and conservatives can detect logical flaws in opposing arguments, but when it comes to their own side many fall short of being critical thinkers.
Ignoring, denial, or dismissal become the norm for both liberals and conservatives. Even scientists put politics first.
In a new paper, experiments showed that tribal instincts kick in and people's ability to think logically declines when it comes to arguments related to their belief systems but unsound reasoning of political opposition was readily flagged.
In their first study, 1,374 visitors (30.1% were female, Mage ¼ 40.09, SDage ¼ 16.50) to YourMorals.org were in an experiment to test the tendency to judge logical arguments based on the believability of their conclusions rather than whether or not the arguments' premises support the conclusions. They evaluated the logical soundness of classically structured logical syllogisms supporting liberal or conservative beliefs. Of 16 syllogisms, half were structured as sound arguments, and half unsound.
Participants correctly judged 73% of the syllogisms, on average, but their ability to judge correctly depended on their political views.
In a second experiment, 1,743 participants (65.4% female; Mage ¼ 34.25, SDage ¼ 13.39) at Project Implicit were observed for ideological belief bias by being trained in logical reasoning before evaluating political syllogisms using language similar to what they might encounter in popular media. Even with training, their ability to analyze arguments fell into the same patterns. The authors found similar patterns of bias in a nationally representative sample containing 1,109 liberals and conservatives.
The left and right can't agree on objective facts, even if they consider themselves more intelligent, better-educated, or critial thinkers. When politics enter the discourse, we lose all sense of logic itself - about our own beliefs.
Citation: (Ideo)Logical Reasoning: Ideology Impairs Sound Reasoning, Anup Gampa, Sean P. Wojcik, Peter H. Ditto, et al. Social Psychological and Personality Science Volume 10, Issue 8, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550619829059?source=sc…