by Dan Sperber
This being cleared up, let’s recap. A lot of evidence shows that reasoning has a myside bias. Reason rarely questions reasoners’ intuitions, making it very unlikely that it would correct any misguided intuitions they might have. This is pretty much the exact opposite of what you should expect of a mechanism that aims at improving one’s beliefs through solitary ratiocination. There is no obvious way to explain the myside bias from within the intellectualist approach to reasoning.
A strong, universal bias is unlikely to be a mere bug, a bad thing. Instead, it is more likely to be a useful feature. What goal could the myside bias serve? The analogy of the lone reasoner as scientist proposed by Wason does not fit, but another analogy does throw some light on this mysterious bias.
Cicero may be Western civilization’s most illustrious lawyer, his writings on rhetoric echoing from the Roman senate down through the halls of medieval and modern universities. This is how, in De Inventione, he advised orators to conclude a speech:
It will be serviceable both to run over the arguments which you yourself have employed separately, and also (which is a matter requiring still greater art) to unite the opposite arguments with your own; and to show how completely you have done away with the arguments which were brought against you. And so, by a brief comparison, the recollection of the hearer will be refreshed both as to the confirmation which you adduced, and as to the reprehension which you employed.49
In other words, when you want to convince someone, give only arguments that support your position or that counter the position you oppose. Cicero is bluntly advocating for the myside bias. And it makes complete sense. If a lawyer starts arguing against her client or for the other side, she’ll soon be out of business.50
The lawyer analogy brings to mind a context in which persuasion is paramount and the myside bias makes obvious sense: when defending a point of view, the myside bias is a good thing.51 It is a feature, not a bug. This fits with the prediction of the interactionist approach. If the function of reasoning, when it produces reasons, is to justify one’s actions or to convince others, then it should have a myside bias.
Being Our Own Lawyers
If the myside bias is so ingrained in reason, why should Cicero have to remind us to have a myside bias? While the “reason is a lawyer” analogy can be illuminating, especially by contrast with the more typical analogy of reason as a scientist, it shouldn’t be pushed too far. For instance, unlike typical reasoners, lawyers often argue for positions they personally do not endorse. Their “side” is that of the client who employs them. Finding arguments for a position we do not support, or even one we disagree with, is difficult. It takes skills and training. We may be lawyers, but only when it comes to defending beliefs and decisions we actually endorse.
There are other reasons not to take the lawyer analogy too far. Besides reason, many other cognitive mechanisms are at play when lawyers prepare their plea. When they consciously suppress arguments against their client or use such arguments to anticipate what the other party might say, they rely on strategic planning rather than only on ordinary reasoning. This type of rehearsed-in-advance consistency in the reasons presented goes beyond what can be expected of lay reasoners. Moreover, a lawyer is committed to defend her client come what may. On the other hand, it may be in the best interest of ordinary reasoners who, in spite of the myside bias, find or stumble upon counterarguments against their own views to take these counterarguments seriously and perhaps even to change their minds.
Most importantly, the lawyer analogy applies only to the production of arguments. During a court trial, each actor is ascribed a carefully defined role. To simplify things a bit, lawyers produce arguments, and judges and juries evaluate those arguments. To evaluate arguments, judges and juries also rely on reason, but they, unlike the lawyers, are not supposed to be biased. We will see in Chapter 12 how much the evaluation of arguments fits with the idealized picture of the disinterested judge.
In an adversarial trial, the two battling parties are locked in a zero-sum game: one side’s win is the other side’s loss. While this highlights the utility of the myside bias, it might also unnecessarily tie it to competitive contexts. In fact, even when people have a common stake in finding a good solution and are therefore engaged in a positive-sum game, having a myside bias may still be the best way to proceed.
Imagine two engineers who have to come up with the best design for a bridge. Whichever design is chosen, they will supervise the construction together—all they want is to build a good bridge. Ella favors a suspension bridge, Dick a cantilever bridge. One way to proceed would be for each of them to exhaustively look at the pros and cons of both options, weigh them, and rate them. They would then just have to average their ratings—no discussion needed, but a lot of research.
Alternatively, they can each build a case for their favored option. Ella would look for the pros of the suspension bridge and the cons of the cantilever; Dick would do the opposite. They would then debate which option is best, listening to and evaluating each other’s arguments. To the extent that it is easier to evaluate arguments presented to you than to find them yourself, this option means less work for the same result: Ella and Dick each have to find only half as many arguments to thoroughly review the pros and cons of each option.
The myside bias doesn’t turn argumentation into a purely competitive endeavor. Argumentation is a form of communication and is typically pursued cooperatively. At its best, the myside bias becomes a way of dividing cognitive labor. In Chapter 12, we will see a similar dynamic at play in the way reason evaluates, rather than looks for, arguments.
12
Quality Control: How We Evaluate Arguments
The Cicero we met in Chapter 11 recommending complete one-sidedness was a mere “boy,” whose advice was “rough and incomplete.” Many years later the Roman orator, rich of the “experience which [he] gained from so many and such important causes as [he has] pleaded,”1 tells a different tale:
If ever a person shall arise who shall have abilities to deliver opinions on both sides of a question on all subjects, after the manner of Aristotle, and, from a knowledge of the precepts of that philosopher, to deliver two contradictory orations on every conceivable topic, … and [who] shall unite with those powers rhetorical skill, and practice and exercise in speaking, he will be the true, the perfect, the only orator.2
Accumulating arguments for one side had become child’s play for this veteran of many senate fights. To make a great case, an orator must combine rhetorical skills with the ability to anticipate and take into account potential counterarguments. While a speaker might still only present arguments for her side, her mind must be agile enough not to be blinded by the myside bias.
We claim that the myside bias makes sense when the goal is to justify one’s ideas and actions or to convince others. But wouldn’t justification or conviction be better served if reason allowed us also to find arguments against our side, even if only to refute them? A skilled orator spends time honing her argument—its content, its form, its delivery. From Cicero and Quintilian to contemporary speechwriters and spin doctors, massive efforts are expended to devise convincing arguments. If reasoning, as we claim, evolved to change others’ minds, shouldn’t it look for such well-crafted arguments?
Here, then, is a potential problem for our interactionist theory: a substantial amount of evidence—and a passing familiarity with Internet comments—shows that people are far from being natural Ciceros. In Chapter 11 we encountered Deanna Kuhn’s study of argumentation demonstrating the difficulty most people have in finding counterarguments. The same study showed that even in support of their own point of view, people often give rather weak arguments. Asked about her opinion on school failure, one of Kuhn’s participants identified poor nutrition as the main culprit. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:
Experimenter: If you were trying to convince someone else that your view is right, what evidence would you give to try to show this?
&nb
sp; Participant: The points that they get in school. The grades that they get in school to show …
Experimenter: What would that show?
Participant: That they are lacking something in their body. That the kids who were failing lack something in their body.3
As Kuhn points out, the participant “makes it clear that the existence of the phenomenon itself is sufficient evidence that it is produced by the cause the [participant] invokes.”4 Other participants offered explanations that were close to a restatement of their theory. Most could not think of what would constitute evidence supporting their ideas. Kuhn’s bleak assessment of untrained participants’ argumentative skills is shared by other eminent psychologists, such as Richard Nisbett and Lee Ross, who suggest that people are generally content with the first reason they stumble upon,5 or David Perkins, who asserts that many arguments make only “superficial sense.”6
That reasoning shouldn’t always be able to home in on excellent, knockdown arguments is obvious enough: looking for good reasons is a costly, time-consuming business. There has to be a trade-off between the quality of the reasons and the effort put in finding them. However, what these psychologists claim is not that we find very good, even if imperfect, reasons but that we find quite superficial, weak reasons.
This is another problem for the intellectualist approach. If reason’s function is to improve the lone reasoner’s beliefs and decisions, it had better provide good reasons for them. In fact, however, people’s criteria for their own reasons are pretty lax. So not only do people mostly find reasons that support their intuitions (the myside bias), they don’t even make sure that the reasons are much good. It’s hardly surprising that reason should by and large fail at correcting mistaken intuitions.
What about reason aimed at changing others’ minds? Wouldn’t people be more persuasive if they acted like lawyers, investing time and effort to anticipate potential counterarguments and find better arguments? Reason evolved to be used not in law courts but in informal contexts. Not only are the stakes of an everyday discussion much lower, but its course is also very different. A discussion is interactive: instead of two long, elaborate pleas, people exchange many short arguments. This back-and-forth makes it possible to reach good arguments without having to work so hard.
Interactive Argumentation Is Easier
Sociolinguists stress how much interlocutors help each other communicate effectively, for instance by providing constant feedback that they follow what the speaker is saying: all these “Hm hms,” “Yeahs,” nods, and so forth. Drawing on this tradition, the anthropologist and linguist Steven Levinson has argued that humans are endowed with an “interaction engine.”7 Our communicative abilities are tailored to the interactive context in which they naturally function. For instance, when we want to refer to someone, we often have a wide array of options: “Ms. Catherine Turk,” “Ms. Turk,” “Kate,” “the head of the accounting department,” and so forth. Which option is most appropriate in a given context depends, inter alia, on how well the interlocutor knows the person. Happily, if we use the wrong option, the miscommunication can easily be fixed:8
Michael: I had lunch with Kate.
Rob: Who?
Michael: Kate Turk.
Rob: I just arrived here. I don’t think I know her.
Michael: Sorry. She’s the head of the accounting department.
Rob: Ah, right.
Here Michael starts off with the most conventional way of referring to a familiar person in the United States: the first name. Rob’s answers allow him to refine his description until he reaches the appropriate level.
Without using feedback from the interaction partners, deciding the most appropriate form to use would involve much reflection:
Michael, reflecting: Everybody here knows Kate. But Rob just arrived. However, Kate always makes an effort to introduce herself to everybody when they arrive. Rob got here two days ago, so he should know her. But I haven’t seen Kate yesterday or the day before, so perhaps she was sick and didn’t come. I’d better specify who she is just in case.
The solution people adopt—starting out with what seems to be the best option and, if necessary, refining it with the help of feedback—is the most economical. For communicators, being “lazy”—using the shortest form likely to be understood—is being smart.9
The feedback from the interlocutor is useful for at least two reasons. One reason is that it is the interlocutor’s understanding that matters in the end, so it is easier to let her decide whether she understands or not. Another reason is that the interlocutor can do more than indicate she doesn’t understand what the speaker means: she can actively guide the speaker’s efforts, as Rob did when he told Michael why he doesn’t know who Kate is.
Reasoners face a similar challenge: figuring out what is the best way to get their message across. They, too, could engage in elaborate guesswork to find the best argument in every situation. This strategy is both time and effort intensive, and far from being foolproof, as illustrated by the following exchange:
Sherlock Holmes meets his friend Watson at a coffee shop.
Holmes: My dear Watson, I didn’t dare interrupt—you were in such charming company! I’ve been observing the two of you for a few minutes, and I must absolutely advise you to see this woman again! She’s a perfect match for you. You may say that she’s younger than you, but the age difference is not that large. I know you have a thing for brunettes, and she’s blond, but that should easily be overlooked. I also observed that while you were talking of personal matters, there were no signs of physical intimacy, but I’m persuaded that would come quickly enough. Watson, I’m sure this woman is perfect for you!
Watson: She’s my sister.
Of course, Conan Doyle always rigged the situation so that his Holmes would not commit this kind of faux pas. Our Holmes, who is also fictional but a tad more realistic, was unable to guess that Watson’s charming companion was his sister. Had he paused after exclaiming, “You were in such charming company!,” Holmes would have been told that the lady was Watson’s sister and would have avoided further embarrassment.
Feedback plays an important role even in simple forms of argumentation. Take this banal exchange:
Hélène: We should go to Isami; it’s a good restaurant.
Marjorie: I don’t know. I had Japanese last week already.
Hélène: But this one is very original.
Isami might be a great place for many reasons—its originality, but also the prices, the freshness of the fish, the crowd—but Hélène doesn’t list them all at the outset. Instead, she offers a generic summary assessment: “it’s a good restaurant.” This first argument doesn’t sway Marjorie, but she doesn’t simply say “no.” Instead, she provides a reason for her dissent: “I had Japanese last week already.” Thanks to Marjorie’s feedback, Hélène can tailor her next argument, pointing out the quality of Isami that is most likely to change Marjorie’s mind. In another context, the exchange might have gone as follows:
Hélène: We should go to Isami; it’s a good restaurant.
Marjorie: I don’t know. I don’t have much money at the moment, and Japanese restaurants can be quite pricy.
Hélène: But this one is quite cheap.
Among all the arguments Hélène could have put forward at the outset, some are much more likely to convince Marjorie than others. Hélène could have tried to anticipate which arguments would be most convincing, but that would have taken some effort—even in the unlikely event that she had access to all the pertinent information, from where Marjorie ate last week to the state of her bank account.
Admittedly, sometimes achieving prompt conviction is crucial. When Voltaire, the high priest of French Enlightenment, was about to be lynched by an English mob, he had to convince them quickly that he was a genuine anglophile (which he apparently did). Fortunately, very few discussions have such urgency. Most aim at deciding who should do the dishes, whether the Joneses should be invited for dinner, or what is
the best movie in the theaters at the moment. Failing to immediately prevail in mundane discussions is nearly costless. Even when the stakes are higher—does the customer buy the car, does the policeman accept your account, should your family move to Singapore or stay in Hong Kong—failing with the first reason is rarely critical; more reasons can be tried out.
Providing a stream of poor reasons does carry a cost: making the speaker look daft. As a result, even casual arguers should exhibit a moderate degree of quality control regarding the reasons they provide. What is clear, however, is that our interactionist theory does not predict that humans should be born Ciceros, weaving complex arguments and spontaneously anticipating rebuttals. Reason should make the best of the interactive nature of dialogue, refining justifications and arguments with the help of the interlocutors’ feedback.
Refining Reasons
The experiments presented earlier, which prompted psychologists to deplore the poor quality of the reasons put forward by participants, did not take place in a typical dialogic context. When a normal interlocutor is not swayed by a reason, she offers counterarguments, pushing the speaker to provide better reasons. An experimenter, by contrast, remains neutral. She may prompt the participant for more arguments, but she doesn’t argue back. If reason evolved to function in an interactive back-and-forth, strong arguments should be expected only when they are called for by an equally strong pushback.