Confirmation Biases

In which my wife, Stephanie St. John Olear, interviews me about my new book, "Rough Beast," and applies a psychological concept to MAGA behavior

“Untruth naturally afflicts historical information,” the Arab historian Ibn Khaldun, the founder of sociology, wrote in his Muqaddimah in 1377. “[I]f the soul is infected with partisanship for a particular opinion or sect, it accepts without a moment’s hesitation the information that is agreeable to it. Prejudice and partisanship obscure the critical faculty and preclude critical investigation. The result is that falsehoods are accepted and transmitted.”

In 1818’s Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer distills this to a single sentence: “An adopted hypothesis gives us lynx-eyes for everything that confirms it and makes us blind to everything that contradicts it.”

And Leo Tolstoy, the Russian novelist and early adopter of nonviolent protest, had this to say, in What Is Art? in 1897: “I know that most men—not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever, and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic problems—can very seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as to oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty—conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives.”

In modern psychology, this phenomenon is called confirmation bias, a coinage of the late Peter Cartcart Wason, a British cognitive psychologist who studied the psychology of reasoning. On today’s PREVAIL podcast, my wife, Stephanie St. John Olear, who has a Master’s degree in psychology and is a licensed mental health counselor, explains it thus:

Confirmation bias is, okay, I’m on an airplane, and it hits some turbulence. I look around me, is anyone else freaking out? Okay, nobody else is freaking out. So then I think, okay, so maybe we’re okay, right? Or I look at the flight attendants; they seem to be calm. So confirmation bias is, I look around me, and everybody seems calm. So then I’m like, “Okay, then everything’s cool.” Even though, you know, in a second we may go down in flames.

This psychological tropism is what informs MAGA. Conservatives hear their friends, their neighbors, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson and whatever ghoul is on Newsmax, telling them what they already think they know: Biden senile, immigrants bad, migrants violent, Trump alpha male, or whatever. Hearing this all over the place, and on TV no less!, they never question their (erroneous) belief.

“That’s what people do,” Stephanie says. “They talk to their neighbors. They talk to their friends in their friend circle. And if that’s what they’re saying, then they’re like, okay, yeah, everything’s cool because that makes me feel safe. That’s what confirmation bias is. And that’s what is happening with a lot of people.”

Boomers, who are old enough to remember Walter Cronkite, are particularly susceptible to MAGA bullshit on the zombie box. “Years ago, you had to read the paper, you had to sit down and watch the news at night, at a specific time,” Stephanie says. “There’s such an onslaught of information that I think people in the older generations get totally overwhelmed, and they just want to do what their friends are doing.”

Confirmation bias is the jet fuel that powers Fox News. How many Americans doubt the results of the 2020 election because of lies disseminated on that network about rigged voting machines? How many died of covid because they believed what Carlson and others were telling them?

It works the other way, too. Trump is—as I lay out in my new book, Rough Beast—a liar, a criminal, and a Kremlin stooge. These truths were not confirmed by the mainstream media—not in 2016, not in 2020, and not even now, with Donald openly channeling Adolf as he awaits the jury’s decision in the first of his four criminal trials.

Jack Smith says little. Merrick Garland says little (which has always been my primary criticism of him). Robert Mueller said little. The vacuum of accurate information made it, and makes it, that much easier for the liars to, as Steve Bannon so poetically put it, flood the zone with shit.

Biden and Trump are not the same. It’s not remotely apples and apples, Stephanie says. “It’s like apples and, you know, toxic nuclear waste.”

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LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

S7 E14: Rough Beast: A New Book by Greg Olear

In this special “Rough Beast” book launch episode, the PREVAIL podcast is turned upside-down: Greg Olear is the guest, and the host is his wife, Stephanie St. John Olear. They talk about the new book, confirmation bias, and Biden’s chances of winning in November. Plus: Scar-Jo!

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ROUGH BEAST NEWS

I’m #1 in Fascism! Which is a strange think to write out, but still. Thanks to everyone who bought the book.

Note that #5 on this list is a tome co-authored by chaos agent Jack Posobiec. Thanks for helping me best that clown.

Rough Beast is now available in paperback and e-book formats. The audiobook is coming. The title is “in process” at Ingram Spark, and will soon be available to bookstores as well.

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I was fortunate enough to appear on several excellent shows this past week. On Monday, I was the guest on the indefatigable Allison Gill’s flagship podcast, The Daily Beans:

On Tuesday, my man Tony Michaels was kind enough to have me on his live show, The Tony Michaels Podcast:

And “Bad” Brad Berkwitt was good enough to ask me a lot of questions that were NOT about Trump on his show on Wednesday:

In non-Rough Beast news, my friend Cliff Schecter put out a particularly good video about the Jasmine Crockett-MTG brouhaha:

Finally, I’ll be on stage with Allison Gill and Stephanie Koff over Father’s Day weekend next month: Saturday, June 15 and Sunday, June 16, in NYC and Boston, respectively.

If tickets are still available, you can get them here.

Thanks, and enjoy your holiday weekend!

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