The warm glow of certainty

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Did President Obama commit an act of imperial hubris on immigration, or was he simply following the humane lead of Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush? Did police officer Darren Wilson get away with murder, or did Michael Brown force the cop's hand by attacking him? How lovely it would be if we all could judge such questions coolly and rationally, on the basis of evidence. Alas, virtually all of us respond to emotionally loaded issues in a visceral way, and then reason backward to the conclusion that feels right because it buttresses what we already believe. The stronger people's political and moral values, social scientists have found, the more reflexively they react to any hot-button debate. "Morality binds and blinds," says social psychologist Jonathan Haidt in his superb book, The Righteous Mind. "It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle."

That much, at least, is inarguable. Duke University researchers recently presented self-identified liberals and conservatives with evidence contradicting their views on gun ownership and climate change, respectively. Since neither group liked the policy implications of the evidence, each simply dismissed it as lies. Motivated reasoning, as social psychologists call this phenomenon, is highly rewarding: It wards off the discomfort we feel when our preconceptions are challenged. It binds us further to our "tribe," filling us with the warm glow of impregnable certainty. But as Haidt points out, self-righteous partisanship has a steep cost: "It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say."

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William Falk is editor-in-chief of The Week, and has held that role since the magazine's first issue in 2001. He has previously been a reporter, columnist, and editor at the Gannett Westchester Newspapers and at Newsday, where he was part of two reporting teams that won Pulitzer Prizes.