WHY HUMANS KEEP SWATTING AT EACH OTHER, ASSUMING THE DISSIDENTS “INTELLECTUALLY IMPAIRED”?

“What’s damn wrong with you, ain’t it straightforward enough”?

To put into perspective, that we oftentimes fail to interpret something to someone — “it’s straightforward enough, you fool” — is woefully common. After all, that those “someone” in turn fail to discern the “straightforward enough” something, per se, is doomed any less bothersome to us.

They are indeed “straightforward enough”, we reckon.

Such “something” as appreciation and apology that should have been installed along with one’s human conversation ability. How awkward it must be making excuses for heinous mistakes with sheepish smiles so that someone would, on behalf of him, abear the consequences; or self-claiming his superior privileges at helping hands — for he “deserves”, and others must back him up.

Even those turning 30, 40 or even 50 often fail to carry out such fundamental, trivial manners and behaviors. It then turns out an inescapable fact that not until their arrival at middle ages could these individuals learn how to dress, properly walk and civilly behave — from YouTubers (who are with any less elemental knowledge background). This, nevertheless, is not necessarily a negative trend — the only negativity is to discern they, per se, could have bettered themselves much earlier.

The emblem of the aforementioned tendency, however, is most evident in online debates. Oftentimes, we are perpetually disconcerted by how online debaters perpetuate their bottomless arguments, even more violently by how such words could beguile oodles of bigots. They zero in realities in another universe, in miracles as if magic still existed in 2020, the Moon were fabricated, the US and China leaders were both dull and dangerous (!?) , science were a hoax, or a halt to m4sturb4t1on could heal everything.

“What’s damn wrong with you, ain’t it straightforward enough”?

This question is equal, thus intriguing enough. It is not only restricted among the helpless with profound backgrounds, but also those without. Every human is preoccupied by this mind-boggling question (assuming himself the all-knowing). Oftentimes, anti-vaccine supporters may wonder why any humanly creatures would ever take their children to the hospital to get injected with a host of unknown compounds. A theist, by the same token, is no less frustrated at atheists’ failure to grasp the ultimate power and infinite potentials of supernatural beings; or the x-pillers who perceive women as portable dishwashers must question all the time how these “machines” are granted worldwide leaderships and the right to dress seductively, even to choose their own partners.

In their worldview, neither correctly details how the world de facto operates.

Even more interesting, this is no less common among the “neutral” and self-wise. They turn to it as the ultimate argument that nothing is absolute, every human has their own worldview and quarrels between whom are futile. From a such seemingly wise and benevolent proclamation, they indirectly act as a precursor to the woefully hazardous behavior of equalizing such heinous crimes as terrorism, wars, murd3rs; anti-science on par with science, whippersnappers with masterminds who put every effort in bettering this world, or extremists with peaceful, gentle individuals. After all, the “relativization of everything”, in fact, is by no means the neutralization of this world, but the workshop of their own lunacy both in the past and future.

This seemingly neutral and half-hearted kindness is cataclysmic, and only deserves loathes. What people seem to let slip from their minds is that however incontrovertibly true their arguments are in their own realities, they altogether are living in an objectively real world wherein contradictions never bring about overall uniformity. This is simply mathematically illogical.

Ain’t it straightforward enough?

1. “The data sets” that govern behaviors

Within the three articles in last week’s theme, Monster Box broke down the illusions, and delusions that distort one’s perceptions on the physical world. It turns out, illusion is a pre-installed, internal mechanism to perceive and interpret the real world, thus every so often produces results that confuse our own perception.

Simply scroll down the Monster Box page for in-depth information.

In this article, we are hereby zeroing in somewhat personal, perceptible, and social illusions: why, for example, do we tolerate biases and prejudices, which in turn wildly vary among individuals? What, after all, is the biological mechanism behind this, and how would we abear it?

Let us first clarify the concepts. Humans, as a rule, often underestimate the impacts of prejudices and biases. For example, many take the assumption that these are merely “feelings”, and are deliberately conducted. In fact, things are more “real” — amid a thrilling football match, that the home team’s audience purport the other 11 players play worse, and their team’s victory makes more sense is because they indeed unconsciously feel that way, irregardless of the data displaying the other way around. Biases and prejudices are kindred with illusions, which impose a false reality on these audiences instead of their “pretensions”.

A Nautilus article reporting a survey findings on fans’ perception of a sports match (on the violence levels) details it as no less a fierce battle — even though it was a normal match with no less normal violence parameters than any other [1].

It also reiterates the notorious experiment on [the shades of] rabbit and duck — which inspired today’s article’s illustration. Researchers found that if the survey was carried out near Easter, more children participants claimed it must have been rabbits, and conversely, ducks on other occasions. Also, having learned that the picture demonstrates rabbits and ducks, your mind shall contort your visual perception to this information (it is purely an experiment). Among these young respondents, it took them quite a while to recognize the other animal. In particular, upon answering either “rabbit” or “duck”then prompting “do you see any other animals”, they still took time to review and doubt “is there any other?”.

This confusion, to all appearances, is deemed the brain’s workshop of inference. It, accordingly, leap to its own conclusion from the given data blended with its own inferences. The drawing sketches out some features of both animals, then the brain deduces and figures them out, and since the inference process belongs to the brain, the latter is also affected. Near Easter, for example, it is more likely to interpret “rabbit” out of this sketch.

Inference, that said, is an efficacious mechanism. Noticing a few yellow spots in the bushes, the brain quickly analyzes them, detecting a tiger and triggering a fight-or-flight response. Without rationality, humans would be drearily dull, heeding the yellow-green blend as a meaningless color combination, the eyes in the dark as bright spots contrasting the black background instead of interpreting an ambushing predator to evade.

For this deductive process can go wrong, there exists the so-called state of “false illusions” or a host of other falsifiable, invisible fears. Which, we reckon, is better than mistaking. Even to invisible fear, we often feel terror-stricken. In this case, even when there is no tiger, as the brain misinterprets it, the former reacts as though it had de facto confronted a tiger.

To a certain extent, Hogwarts Headmaster — Dumbledore’s acclaimed words wrap this up: “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”.

In a Neuropsychologia publication, upon being inquired to validate whether a “color-associated object” was true (say a red apple), participants’ brains responded in the same way as they worked out the answer for “is it red?”. As they were prompted to imagine the apple, these respondents rapidly related it to red to save time and effort.

This evidences we inherently own a veteran system of inferring experience — that bananas are yellow and apples are red. This is convenient, efficient and time-saving. But what would it entail, in other occasions wherein we are confronted with more convoluted situations, or fail to retrieve the right experiences?

In another experiment, a 45-second video of a fight between a policeman and an unarmed civilian was shown to participants. In this case, the former was wrong. Before the experiment, they were asked beforehand of their attitudes towards the police (on the righteousness of violent methods in quelling criminals). During the actual experiment, researchers observed the participants’ eye movements and unveiled those who were more attentive to the policeman gave final decisions much akin to their original responses. For example, those inherently disgusting police sentenced them to more severe punishments; while others made excuses for and imposed less poignant sentences on these behaviors. Strikingly enough, those with neutral eye movements (not focusing particularly on any subject) brought about fairer decisions regardless of their former responses.

Unsurprisingly, another experiment (wherein the recorded police are not guilty or the content was modified, for example, on shirt colors) yielded much analogous results.

The co-author, Emily Balcetis argues we often tilt toward those “not on our side”. In this manner, those who possessed an inherent aversion to the police, or prejudices on police abuses of power over civilians, indeed homed in the recorded cops, turning a blind eye to other details, thereby abearing more intense feelings and more harshly reprimanding policemen. They felt bona fide all the time that their decisions were justified and fair enough. Whilst those with affections towards police, in contrast, accidentally overpassed officers’ details.

Back to the aforementioned duck-rabbit experiment: in another similar experiment, researchers pre-designed a game of finding animals — distinguishing “farm animals” and “marine creatures” (one topic was assigned per person). Participants were rewarded for spelling out the most and penalized for missing any, and one image is with a horse-seal shade. As it would suggest, those assigned with identifying “marine creatures” anticipated it as a seal, whilst their counterparts purported it was a horse. The reason for this, Ms. Balcetis argues, is that we often unconsciously identify the seemingly beneficial things and our original thoughts.

The Nautilus’s article also refers to other experiments that were belief- and politic-based. For example, upon getting exposed to illustrations of as consequences of such diseases as measles, mumps (upon not being vaccinated), anti-vaccine supporters still reckoned that the vaccine bred heaps of hazardous side effects and rarely changed their mind on vaccination. In a like manner, to surveyed politicians, achievements are often exaggerated and attributed to their “models”, while every negativity is wired on their dissidents.

Sewing these views together, it then seems evident that our experiences are affiliated with the “final judgment”. And it is deemed no less straightforward that dearth of scientific knowledge is the workshop of conspiracy theories, then underhanded statements on vaccines, nutrition, politics, and so on. Also, it would hardly be a mental wreck to learn we are perceiving distortions, given the human constraints in both our experience or knowledge.

2. What can, and cannot be polished?

So, to change others’ perspectives, it is critical to give them an amount of righteous information, and guide the justified way of thinking (to shape thinking). This is the essence of propaganda and the media, which takes time and a handsome amount of effort.

Therefore, it is not possible to “educate” anyone’s opinion during a single argument. However, we can participate in the process of making the world a better place as a crew member in that long voyage. For example, Monster Box never thought that an article could help change the minds of those who deny science, or extreme bigots of anti-scientific themes. Simply put, their beliefs are inherently the result of a long process, and so it would take that much amount of time (or mental wrecks) to reverse.

The human faith, after all, never sprouts from the air. It is the fruit of a tree, growing from the ground and surviving, nourished by billions of other complex elements in complex forms and chains.

There were some things that were even uncontrollable during the growth of that tree, for example some childhood worms and habitat rains.

A paper citing experiments shows that some groups of African aboriginals are not affected by certain illusions [2], such as the arrow illusion in which one line has two arrowheads pointing in, and the other with two arrows pointing out (illustrations in the comment section below).

We are set to perceive the line with the inward arrow longer, while the outward shorter, which is due to the brain analysis of multidimensional shapes, and that we inhabit rectangular blocks. The corners of the house are shaped like these two arrows (illustrations in the comment section below), and this experience has partly “trained” our brain. But African aboriginals living in the wilderness never lived in such cubes, so they immediately noticed the two straight lines were equal.

Origin and culture also affect the way we think. For example, in an experiment [3] that participants observed a picture, then were asked to depict, both Chinese and American students could perform this assignment. However, as changes were introduced — researchers altered some of the details — Americans could still nail them down without difficulty, while Chinese could scarcely and displayed a sharp drop in success rates. This group wondered if they had seen these before. The conclusion, as they temporarily drew, is that American zoom in on details, while Chinese pay attention to the big picture.

Another experiment between Japanese and American students evidenced a similar trend [4]. Participants were shown a picture of 5 students with facial expressions, with a larger-faced protagonist in the center (illustrations in the comment section below). In pictures depicting the central jubilant whilst others were not, 72% of Japanese students claimed they could not ignore the side characters’ expressions, while only 28% of American students reported the same thing. At the same time, Japanese students rated the main character’s joy lessened if the supporting characters in the same photo displayed sad expressions, while Americans simply homed in on those of the protagonist to draw conclusions.

The same holds true for other expressions. Japanese students also found the main character less happy or angry, if the side characters display opposite expressions respectively. After all, it seems Japanese always take heed of other factors in judging the characters.

This is somehow affiliated with the polarized philosophical characteristics, in which Westerners break down the objects to scrutinize, while Asians always examine them in relationships with their surroundings. This does not emblematize my personal perspective, still, I reckon this somehow reasons out the sublime anime backgrounds.

It seems that we are born pre-installed with a set of things, growing up with and discerning its presence when it has been too late. Even when changes are still possible, to take heed of this is neither for the present nor the immediate moment, but for the future. We, nonetheless, are not attempting to “domesticate” extremists, since it would any less a splurge — instead, it is to head us towards a future society with fewer extremists. For example, Monster Box’s investment (in science and the young), in this manner, is in a such future, other than to win back some temporary values.

It is for others, for the great distant, which is thought-provoking, yet difficult to bring under control. It commands a smart long-term strategy to perpetuate. But personally, I think you should restrain yourselves from self-indulgence. Stay astute and devise your own revolution schemes (who else can help you but yourselves?).

3. To be the “objective”

Back to the watching experiment, as well as the self-objective previously. You can see, people who tend to look closely at details tend to think direction is not as objective as they think, but instead is influenced by prejudices and biases since the beginning.

For example, in a long post, some feminists can leverage a number of trivial details (while pushing the significance of those details) to demand the author to “stand from a more objective perspective” as theirs. Were they indeed objective, nevertheless, they would hardly have nitpicked details; while the author who is more carefree, does rarely bother this triviality. This is woefully common to Monster Box articles, on a variety of topics.

It is not to mention those “from a broader worldview”, who claim “I am on the customer perspective”, “on behalf of the public”, “voicing everyone’s opinion”, and comment on details, and are often the least unbiased ones. Personally, never have I encountered any experts or highly qualified persons who commit such garrulous behaviors. In contrast, it is young marketers who often “stand from the perspective of the customer and reckon this color is not very eye-catching”, which is no less a subjective perspective. Or those who have a little knowledge, tend to identify themselves as the jury to make judgments “for those I’m representing”. The most objective thing we can believe is reliable data, not anyone’s mouth, especially the self-objective’s.

Simply put, to attain absolute objectivity is onerous (does it mean to strive to be a God?), and rarely do we need such a thing. In 1954, the classic work “The Nature of Prejudice” by the American psychologist Gordon Allport concluded that: prejudice is inevitable. We think, and so we are prejudiced. The way the brain forms the right thinking also indirectly breeds prejudice, which is an attached document alongside perception.

We can be subjective as long as we have a foundation for which and base it the collected objective data. Objective self-identity, after all, is how unfounded talkers build up their own feeble intangible groundworks (“for I’m objective, I’m righteous”). Taking heed of our limited experience, unsounding rationality and self-assessment, and that we are objective will detail how wretched we are, then how much practice we need.

Familiarize yourselves with the very fact that you, per se, are forevermore subjective to acquire another fact that the weight of any arguments is contingent upon the experience one holds, the data he has collected, his knowledge profundity, and the thinking pathway on which he has embarked. Deficiency of any spell out our inferiority. And this tolerates no such thing as relativity.

Also, to take heed of one’s subjectivity, as well as others’, is to hobble the prejudices in dialogue. The fact that one person makes an objective self-image indirectly puts them above others, and this plays the core of every prejudice. In “The Nature of Prejudice’’, Allport also made it clear that the prejudiced rarely impose underestimation on others, overestimations on themselves instead. He as well proposes approaches to restrain prejudices, which revolve chiefly around the discussions with dissident groups [5].

Insofar as I anticipate this post is of little value, I hold high expectations of you, and so should you with yourselves.

First, prompt yourselves “ain’t it straightforward enough, how can I be that dull?”.

___________

References:

[1] T. Vanderbilt, “How Your Brain Decides Without You,” Nautilus, Nov. 06, 2014. http://nautil.us/.../how-your-brain-decides-without-you (accessed Dec. 10, 2020).

1. Brugger, P. & Brugger, S. The Easter Bunny in October: Is it disguised as a duck? Perceptual and Motor Skills 76, 577–578 (1993).

2. Mitroff, S.R., Sobel, D.M., & Gopnik, A. Reversing how to think about ambiguous figure reversals: Spontaneous alternating by uninformed observers. Perception 35, 709–715 (2006).

3. Granot, Y., Balcetis, E., Schneider, K.E., Tyler, T.R. Justice is not blind: Visual attention exaggerates effects of group identification on legal punishment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (2014).

4. Van Bavel, J.J., Packer, D.J., & Cunningham, W.A. The neural substrates of in-group bias. Psychological Science 19, 1131–1139 (2008).

5. Coronel, J.C., Federmeier, K.D., & Gonsalves, B.D. Event-related potential evidence suggesting voters remember political events that never happened. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 9, 358–366 (2014).

6. Nyhan, B., Reifler, J., Richey, S. & Freed, G.L. Effective messages in vaccine promotion: A randomized trial. Pediatrics (2014). Retrieved from doi: 10.1542/peds.2013–2365

7. Kornmeier, J. & Bach, M. Ambiguous figures — what happens in the brain when perception changes but not the stimulus. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 6 (2012). Retrieved from doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2012.00051

8. Kornmeier, J. & Bach, M. Object perception: When our brain is impressed but we do not notice it. Journal of Vision 9, 1–10 (2009).

9. Kahan, D.M. Ideology, motivated reasoning, and cognitive reflection: An experimental study. Judgment and Decision Making 8, 407–424 (2013).

[2] “The Reaction of Two African Societies to the Müller-Lyer Illusion,” The Journal of Social Psychology, 2010. https://www.tandfonline.com/.../10.../00224545.1962.9712375 (accessed Dec. 10, 2020).

[3] H. F. Chua, J. E. Boland, and R. E. Nisbett, “From The Cover: Cultural variation in eye movements during scene perception,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 102, no. 35, pp. 12629–12633, Aug. 2005, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0506162102.

[4] T. Masuda, H. Wang, K. Ishii, and K. Ito, “Do surrounding figures’ emotions affect judgment of the target figure’s emotion? Comparing the eye-movement patterns of European Canadians, Asian Canadians, Asian international students, and Japanese,” Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, vol. 6, 2012, doi: 10.3389/fnint.2012.00072.

[5] Paluck, Elizabeth Levy; Green, Seth A; Green, Donald P (10 July 2018). “The contact hypothesis re-evaluated”. Behavioural Public Policy. 3 (02): 129–158. doi:10.1017/bpp.2018.25

Pettigrew, Thomas F.; Tropp, Linda R. (2008). “How does intergroup contact reduce prejudice? Meta-analytic tests of three mediators”. European Journal of Social Psychology. 38 (6): 922–934. doi:10.1002/ejsp.504

Further Reading:

I. Katz, “Gordon Allport’s ‘The Nature of Prejudice,’” Political Psychology, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 125–157, 1991, doi: 10.2307/3791349.