Not Believing Our Own Eyes
Sometimes we want to belong - to share an identity - so badly, we can no longer see what is true.
Yesterday was the first lecture for my Introduction to Philosophy class. In the first class, I take a large portion of time to talk about truth. After 20 minutes of lecture then 20 minutes of conversation, my students appeared slightly dizzy. Truth is not as simple and clear to them at the end of class.
Before the lecture I ask them to define truth, what do they mean when they use the word truth? One student replied, it is what is real. Ok, that’s a start. Then at the end of the lecture and class discussion I ask them again. Now the response to the same question is, “I don’t know,” “I’m not sure what reality is anymore.”
Maybe I’m just a sadistic professor, but I have a lot of fun destabilizing student’s assumptions about the nature of reality.
What Do You “Know”?
In a few weeks, the whirlwind of confusion will be back in class when we discuss epistemology, the philosophy of knowledge, I often discuss the social and the psychological aspects of what we call knowledge. One of the phrases I use throughout the course, and then students begin to grasp, is the idea that what we claim to know is a social construct.
A social construct as an estimation of an agreement of what is. My students move from not knowing what truth is, to not knowing if knowing is possible, to eventually not even sure of what reality is. Sorry. Not sorry!
For a lot of people that sounds odd.
Here’s an example: Where I live in Idaho, we usually we have snow. This year, not so much, just a bunch of beige grass and dead leaves. Snow has a strong aesthetic appeal. Among other things, snow reflects and magnifies light helping to keep my seasonal-affect under control. Beige dormant grass just doesn’t do much for me. Bright white new snow is therapeutic. And it is even better on days with sunshine, sub-zero temperatures, and blue sky. It is a dopamine rush. For all of snow’s differences, I still just call it snow, and may add a few adjectives. Wet snow, fluffy snow, dry powder, etc.
I ask my philosophy students to name all the different kinds of snow. The snowboarders and skiers usually can name a few more types of snow than others. My students come up with several words for snow, maybe five, sometimes more. Then I show them a list of fifty Swedish words for snow. And, since I do not know Swedish, there might be even more. The meaning is not somehow mystically set into the words. The meaning is ascribed to them by a community. Being a part of that community entails acquiring the community’s words and awareness and meaning. The community creates meaningful words.
But things can go completely in the other direction. Community can construct false meanings as well.
Communities of Falsehood
In the 1950s, Solomon Asch of Swarthmore College produced a series of experiments on social conformity. And how people would even come to deny their own experiences in order to belong to the group. The meaning that is socially constructed by the prevailing empowered majority greatly influences one’s own experience of the truth.
People, just the way we are as humans, longing for connection and relationship, we do not function in isolation. Loneliness is directly corelated to poor health. Loneliness is deadly (Harvard, 2017). Conforming to social expectations not only creates a meaningful way to talk about our experiences and create language, but it is also the assurance of belonging and even surviving.
But, that desire to belong can go off the rails.
Back to Solomon Asch
Asch (Asch, 1951) brought eight people into a room. One, unwittingly, was the only test subject, the other seven were confederates (the fancy term in sociological and psychological research for those in on the secret). Everyone in the room is given a simple task: compare a single line on one card to three lines on another. Perfectly simple. Here’s the historically famous illustration of the lines. Everyone is asked which line on the second card matches the image on the first card.
The confederates were asked the question one at a time, with the test subject last. The confederates are all instructed to give the same wrong answer to the consternation of the subject. The one left is wondering if the others all need glasses, or maybe there’s something wrong their own experience of what they believe they see. The simple task has just gotten unexpectedly complicated. And then, when the subject is asked last, they end up agreeing with the others. When faced with belonging, or believing one’s own perception, belonging wins. No one wants isolation.
Here's an example:
In numerous tests, 75% caved to pressure at least once, and 33% chose to disbelieve their own eyes.
In 2023 the study was replicated by Axel Franzen and Sebastian Mader at the University of Bern. While their test results were in keeping the Asch’s findings, they also tested for political opinions (Franzen, 2023). When political opinions were factored in, the conformity rate increased to just over 36%. While it is only a little bit higher, it is curious as to why there would be a difference at all for political matters. Hypotheses abound!
Why this matters
In Maria Ressa’s book, How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future, Ressa explains how social media algorithms group people together. Affinity is magnified by linking people who have a similar outlook, who “like” the same things (Ressa, 2023) Imagine, then, the test subjects from Asch’s study who wanted to belong more than to trust their eyes. They will be grouped. When belonging becomes strong enough, any conspiracy becomes potentially real, riding on the wheels of the familiarity effect and confirmation bias.
Ressa’s personal and professional battles have been for human rights in the context of the age of social media, which she documents as a force destroying our ability to access facts.
“Without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without these three, we have no shared reality. We cannot solve any problem. We have no democracy” (Chua, 2023).
Imagine a team meeting for a new product of service. What do we know about our community? How do we interpret our own experiences? While we may be committed to the team, our impressions of the world are affected by our sources apart from our team. Not just the sources of our information, but more – our sources of belonging and identity.
Thinking of the Asch study as an analogy, do we sometimes find our friends, family members, and coworkers misidentifying the correct lines? For instance, do we occasionally hear someone comment on something and wonder how they could support an idea that seems contrary to our own experiences? Do we assume they are wrong, and we are right? Or do we enter into dialog about how we experience our perceptions and arrive at conclusions? How do we help each other reflect on perceptions and judgments?
In this age of identity politics, transformative leadership will be embodying the skills of humble inquiry and creating space for seeking truth together.
Works Cited
Asch, S. E. (1951). Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgments. In H. Guetzkow (Ed.), Groups, leadership, and men (pp. 177–190). Carnegie Press. https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/1952-asch.pdf
Chua, K. (2023, February 24). Maria Ressa at UNESCO Internet for Trust conference: Algorithms undermine right to facts. Rappler. Retrieved from https://www.rappler.com/technology/maria-ressa-unesco-conference-2023-algorithms-undermine-right-to-facts/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Franzen, A. &. (2023). The power of social influence: A replication and extension of the Asch experiment. Journal of the Public Library of Science, 18(11), e0294325. doi:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0294325
Harvard. (2017, January 13). Harvard Health Blog. Retrieved from Harvard University Medical School: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-power-and-prevalence-of-loneliness-2017011310977
Ressa, M. (2023). How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The fight for Our Future. NY: HarperCollins.