when in doubt, shout? maybe, but not so fast.
Ed Yong has a summary of a study which tries to show that proselytizing and overzealous support for an idea or an opinion comes from a lack of confidence in it, or basically, the most adamant proselytizers devote so much time and effort to proselytizing because they’re trying to convince themselves and create a bandwagon fallacy to prove how right they are to outside observers. Since Ed always does such a terrific job summarizing the studies he chooses to highlight, I’m going to encourage you to take a look at what he has to say about the study’s methods and background, while I skip ahead to the example that inspired the researchers to do what I usually do, which is to critique the results and the study’s stated implications. And while the work itself seems sound and we can all summon anecdotal evidence to support it, it comes with a great potential for misuse.
Generally, we know what when people try to justify their beliefs they can get quite verbose, especially when a force from the outside world challenges their beliefs. We also know that a lengthy argument can be as much about convincing oneself as it is about convincing others. We also know that people tend to reject evidence if this evidence doesn’t mesh with their beliefs, and that they’re often subject to bandwagon fallacies. Really, none of what the researchers discovered should be a shock to our system. But note the context in which they wanted to study logorrhea betraying a lack of confidence. The notion came from studies of a religious cult…
Gal and Rucker were inspired by a classic psychological book called When Prophecy Fails. In it, Leon Festinger and colleagues infiltrated an American cult whose leader convinced her followers that flying saucers would rescue them from an apocalyptic flood… When the fated moment came and nothing happened, the group decided that their dedication spared the Earth from destruction. In a reversal of their earlier distaste for publicity, they started to actively proselytize for their beliefs. Far from shattering their faith, the absent UFOs had turned them into zealous evangelists.
We should keep a few things in mind here. Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter used this research to create a theory of coping mechanisms which come into play when one’s beliefs have been shaken and postulate that the more a person invests in a particular belief, the stronger the urge to advocate for it, something we saw in an older post, and highlighted in a popular video featuring a Q&A with Dawkins. Likewise, they also say that the typical response to cognitive dissonance is to try to eliminate it by seeking converts to one’s cause, using your argument’s popularity to judge its correctness. Again, all this is true to an extent, but it doesn’t account for a number of common situations where verbose defenses of one’s position or passionate advocacy have very little to do with convincing oneself and everything to do with educating and convincing others. Used as a high level explanation for our behavior, this theory suggests that anyone who set about on a lengthy justification or explanation of something must have little to no confidence in his or her position. But clearly, that’s not true. In many cases, a position has to be explained in great detail and address numerous criticisms with evidence or logical conclusions. The length of a missive or the dedication of the writer are only reflective of the depth and breadth of the concept being debated in those cases, rather than his or her confidence.
But hold on, you may say, what about the back and forth debates on hot button topics? Aren’t they just proof of two camps of zealots stepping up their rhetoric even if they’re not consciously unsure of their convictions? The most ardent proselytizers feel and act so certain in their arguments, and isn’t that certainly now dictating a big missive in defense because their ideas were challenged? The problem with that line of reasoning is a focus on the subconscious and the mechanics of the debate. We don’t fully know what goes on in a subconscious mind and the mot important thing is any debate is that the facts are correct and properly cited rather than why they were laid out and how. Note that the researchers picked topics where opinions could go either way and there were few defining facts. There are pros and cons to animal research, Macs or PCs are built for different reasons and are good at different things so deciding which one is better depends on your needs, and why at dinner time you would prefer mashed potatoes over baked cauliflower is hardly a quantitative topic. Were they to do the same thing with mathematics or physics, I’m sure the results would be quite different because even the simplest scientific concepts must often be explained in excruciating detail for replication and review. I’d be willing to bet that Gul and Rucker didn’t write six entire pages because they had no confidence in their work…
See: Gal, D., and Rucker, D. (2010). When in Doubt, Shout!: Paradoxical Influences of Doubt on Proselytizing Psychological Science DOI: 10.1177/0956797610385953
