We’re stubborn. And sometimes we like to go against the grain, to be contrary, for the sheer pleasure it brings us. And although we love to think we go through life consistent, the truth is that we often fall prey to cognitive biases. A recent study conducted at Lund University showed that most people would reject their own arguments 60% of the time if they were presented by someone else.
Selective laziness in action
The study in question refers to a phenomenon known in psychology as “selective laziness.” This term refers to our tendency to thoroughly evaluate only arguments from other people, especially when we have disagreed with them in the past.
To demonstrate this phenomenon, the researchers recruited a group of people who were tasked with solving logic problems in the form of syllogisms. They were then asked to write arguments to support their answers.
Participants were then asked to read a series of answers to those same problems, along with various arguments supporting them. They were told that participants had given those answers before them, and their task was to decide whether those arguments were valid or not.
The trick was that some of the arguments shown were actually responses the participants had given themselves, which they had written in the first phase of the experiment. However, they were led to believe that those arguments belonged to another participant.
Interestingly, 60% of the time, people rejected their own arguments, indicating that they were flawed. This phenomenon was even more pronounced when they had previously identified flawed arguments in the questionnaire completed by the supposed “participant.”
Thus, it was observed that we are particularly critical of our own arguments when presented by another person, and if we have disagreed with them in the past, we are even more likely to reject their ideas, even if they coincide with our own. This means that our ability to accept an argument depends, to a large extent, on its source.
What lies behind selective laziness?
What happens is that when we search for arguments to support our ideas, we are driven by selective laziness; we don’t evaluate the pros and cons of that idea, but rather resort to intuitive responses. In short, we don’t become judges of our own reasoning. However, we are harsh judges of the reasoning of others.
In practice, we’re very good at spotting the speck in someone else’s eye, but we often miss the beam in our own. And this phenomenon is even more evident when that person has already made mistakes in the past or we know in advance that they don’t share our ideas.
However, selective laziness isn’t necessarily a negative thing. In fact, when we’re in a group, it can spark debate and enrich the conversation. However, it’s important to be careful not to be overly critical of others, because this can turn us into overly rigid people who, instead of learning, hide behind poorly reasoned arguments.
Source:
Trouche, E. et. Al. (2015) The Selective Laziness of Reasoning. Cognitive Science; 40(8): 2122-2136.
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