In Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions, Professor Todd Rose explains that to belong to a group, people “keep twisting [themselves] into pretzels, trying to conform to what we falsely believe everyone else expects of us.” Seeking acceptance from the group, we conform in language, behavior, beliefs, and practices. As a result, we lose our individuality and aggregate into herds. Within our group we create an alternate reality to fit whichever collective mindset we attach ourselves to, and interpret the world through those lenses—our innate desire to belong overrides reality.
Rose says these illusions “have become a defining feature of our modern society.” In other words, the collectivist mindset is a great conduit for spreading illusions; thus, it is the politician’s favored form of governance.
Rose points to studies in psychology and neuroscience showing we delude ourselves into believing what the majority does, even if it is not what we desire or know to be accurate. Simple problems and even opinions over our favorite foods are affected by peer pressure. When we are isolated, we perform very well, but as part of a test group we often give the wrong answer to conform with the majority. We are not even doing so for acceptance; rather we delude ourselves, and scans of our brains show we actually agree with what is blatantly false. Even when separated from the other subjects (who would not know about our nonconformity), we still conform to the majority once their opinions are revealed to us. Yes, we change our opinions and beliefs to avoid being ostracized, but our brains will adjust our opinions to make us think we desire what the majority does. Rose wrote, “Our internal drive to follow others is so powerful that, if we are not careful, we end up tossing our own private judgment out the window.”
Our self-deception becomes worse when politics are intermingled. Studies show when we are emotionally invested, we unconsciously and even consciously avoid information refuting our position. Rose says when faced with a truth potentially disrupting our internal reality, our “illusion,” we “do everything we can to avoid looking it in the face.” Rose explains:
“When we feel emotionally attached to certain views…we end up using whatever proof we find to simply reinforce the persistent conclusions of our in-group…when membership becomes part of our identity we become protective of its worldview, which we have taken pains to reinforce. We can also become hostile towards people who are not in our group.”
When studies contrasted the two main policies dealing with a contested issue, people who held no opinion either way would change stance once it was revealed which one was “left” and which “right” (regardless of whether this was the case). They immediately identified with and accepted their preferred group’s stances. They were not just trying to fit in; they actually believed it was the correct way to handle the issue only after they had been told what was left and what was right. Again, the solution they adopted was not always their party’s solution; they only needed to believe it was, and it changed their thoughts.
Party affiliation heavily affects how people take on information and facts. They consistently twist the facts to “fit” the party and groupthink narrative. In their book Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government, Professors Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels discovered, “Even on purely factual questions with clear right answers, citizens are sometimes willing to believe the opposite if it makes them feel better about their partisanship and vote choices.” Add on top of this our self-indoctrination, a media willing to lie and distort reality to paint the picture the customers desire, and you are ripe for the vast majority of voters to be misled. Voters create a self-made Matrix to live in.
We can follow the crowds and maintain our illusions, but I hope we decide truth is more vital than belonging to our cultural Matrix. When a large percentage of your society has adopted what was almost universally viewed as oppressive and unnatural worldwide for thousands of years, it’s time to ask if we are following along with an illusion.
