{"id":3310,"date":"2017-04-17T23:45:22","date_gmt":"2017-04-18T03:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=3310"},"modified":"2017-09-06T13:12:36","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T17:12:36","slug":"3310","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2017\/04\/17\/3310\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Students of Politics Should Leave The Colby Hill: The Confirmation Bias"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday, November 8th<\/sup>, 2016, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. Although his supporters were excited and triumphant, many students at Colby College and other campuses across America were left shell-shocked. Students at Ivy League colleges \u2013 and those at Ivy League wannabees \u2013 seemed especially devastated and stunned. The website The College Fix<\/a> reported numerous scenarios that suggested that students had expected a completely different outcome. Students at Columbia \u201ccame running, screaming, and crying to College Walk at 1 a.m.\u201d, and insisted that exams be postponed so they could recover from the ordeal of Trump\u2019s win. Over at Cornell, a completely bewildered student wandered around campus mid-election screaming, \u201cHow the f*** is he winning? What the f***?\u201d At Yale, campus organizers actually organized a post-election group primal scream so students could \u201cexpress their frustration productively.\u201d Even at Penn, Trump\u2019s alma mater, as it appeared likely that Trump would win the election, a student described a \u201cmiserable and most depressing scene.\u201d How could some of the supposedly smartest students \"\"<\/a>in America, schooled on the most elite of college campuses be so befuddled? What happened? Were they really so stupid, or had they perhaps been dumbed-down by their rarefied environment and media predictions based on misleading polls? To read more about misleading polls, click here<\/a>. The answer can be found in a better understanding of the way the brain selects information from the environment, assesses it for accuracy, and reconciles it with pre-existing beliefs.<\/p>\n

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The psychological phenomenon called the confirmation bias is particularly helpful in explaining the shocked reactions on college campuses. The confirmation bias causes us to only consider information that supports what we already believe in. (Nickerson, 1998). In other words, students were only seeking out information that helped justify what they already believed would happen. They were blindsided by the election because the media they paid attention to and the people whose opinions they valued continuously reinforced their own bias \u2013 the idea that Trump was not presidential material and couldn\u2019t possibly win. In addition the primacy effect, that our first inclinations are the strongest and most relevant, (Lingle & Ostrom, 1981) further reinforces the confirmation bias. When Trump first announced his candidacy, the vast majority of individuals at institutions like Colby College decided early on that Trump\u2019s candidacy was a farce. On Ivy League college campuses like Harvard and Yale, over 80 percent of students supported Clinton, and fewer than five percent backed Trump. To read more about how universities across the country responded to the election you can click here<\/a>. The initial prejudices of Colby College students against Trump, further fueled by reports in the mainstream media they paid attention to, were then ingrained by their college environment\u2019s relative isolation from middle America. Literally, the students were stuck in an echo chamber.<\/p>\n

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Colby students were also politically dumbed-down by the attentional bias, which is the act of focusing your attention on one thing while ignoring other simultaneously occurring irrelevant or relevant information (McBride and Cutting, 2016). To read another blog post which provides greater detail on the attentional bias click here<\/a> Students likely zeroed in on information that provided evidence to support their belief that Trump was unelectable, while tuning out competing information that suggested that a sizable percentage of Americans considered him a viable candidate. College students paid attention to Trump\u2019s racist and inappropriate behavior, that they considered unacceptable and repulsive, while ignoring his obvious success in addressing popular topics like jobs, trade, and immigration. Many Americans, who felt left behind and certainly weren\u2019t part of the sorts of groups that tend to gather on elite college campuses, were desperate for a leader to recognize their stress, empathize with their situation, and provide viable solutions. To many people, Trump\u2019s idea of making America great again really translated to making their lives and communities great again. Just guessing, I would think that the majority of Colby\u2019s students already have relatively good lives. Trump\u2019s message just couldn\u2019t resonate with them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The confirmation bias and the primacy effect combined in order to convince people that Trump stood no shot of winning. Although as the election went on and it became more and more likely that Trump might actually win the presidency, many people still maintained their original stance. The likely reason that they weren\u2019t able to shift their viewpoint is due to a cognitive phenomenon known as cognitive dissonance, which is the mental agitation resulting from simultaneously experiencing conflicting beliefs (Kurtzleben, 1998). Cognitive dissonance helps explain the dramatic displays on college campuses on election night. Students at Colby and other elite institutions just weren\u2019t able to process how Trump, who seemed so vapid and made such ridiculous statements \u2013 \u201cI will build a great, great wall\u2026. and make Mexico pay for that wall\u201d \u2013 had just been elected president of the United States. After all, given everything students knew and thought to be true, who would possibly vote for Donald Trump? Cognitive dissonance created mass confusion on elite campuses on election night, worsened by own-judgment evaluation. The own-judgment evaluation is where individuals overestimate the accuracy of their own judgments (Einhorn & Hogarth, 1978). Most students felt so strongly that Trump couldn\u2019t, wouldn\u2019t, and shouldn\u2019t win, that his victory left them suspended in an alternate universe.<\/p>\n

From a distance and given everything psychology can help teach us about how we judge our reality, it becomes easy to understand how students couldn\u2019t understand Trump\u2019s victory. We all make these mistakes on a daily basis and sometimes in ways that profoundly affect our life. For example, if you think your psychology class is ridiculously hard, then you might selectively befriend people who also aren\u2019t doing well in the class. You might ignore warning signs that your study habits aren\u2019t as effective as your classmates, and you might have trouble believing that you are wrong. So what does this mean to students at elite institutions like Colby College that really want to understand the current political environment in the United States? Unless you are really paying close attention to psychology and cognitive miscalculations, and are also keenly aware of the inherent problems of surrounding yourself with those who think just like you, then you\"\"<\/a> may remain stranded in that state of cognitive dissonance where you just can\u2019t understand why sometime like Trump could be president. Of course, not all college campuses are so elitist as to make it difficult to understand and reenter mainstream society. Colby is a special place, and maybe there is an argument for being above the fray, the light on the hill. However, if you don\u2019t want to find yourself in a surreal political universe – leave \u201cThe Hill\u201d, at least occasionally.<\/p>\n

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References<\/p>\n

Einhorn,\u00a0H. J., &\u00a0Hogarth,\u00a0R. M.\u00a0(1978). Confidence in judgment: Persistence of the illusion of validity.\u00a0Psychological Review<\/em>,\u00a085<\/em>, 395\u2013416. Retrieved from http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1037\/0033-295X.85.5.395<\/a><\/p>\n

Festinger, L. (1962). Cognitive dissonance. Scientific America, vol 207(4). <\/em>Retrieved from http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1038\/scientificamerican1062-93<\/a><\/p>\n

Huber, D. (2016, November 9). College newspapers, students freak out over Trump election victory. <\/em>Retrieved from https:\/\/www.thecollegefix.com\/post\/29853\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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Kurtzleben, D. (2016, November 14). 4 Possible reasons the polls got it so wrong this year. <\/em>Retrieved from http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2016\/11\/14\/502014643\/4-possible-reasons-the-polls-got-it-so-wrong-this-year<\/a><\/p>\n

Lingle,\u00a0J. H., &\u00a0Ostrom,\u00a0T. M.\u00a0(1981). Principles of memory and cognition in attitude formation.<\/em> In\u00a0R. E.\u00a0Petty,\u00a0T. M.\u00a0Ostrom, &\u00a0T.<\/p>\n

McBride, D. M., & Cutting, J. C. (2016). Cognitive psychology: theory, process, and methodology<\/em>.<\/em> Los Angeles: Sage<\/p>\n

Nickerson, Raymond S. (June 1998). “Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises”.\u00a0Review of General Psychology<\/em>.\u00a02<\/strong>\u00a0(2): 175\u2013220.\u00a0doi<\/a>:10.1037\/1089-2680.2.2.175<\/a><\/p>\n

Svurluga, Susan. ( 2016, November 9). Mobs of tearful, angry students protesting Trump victory swarm college campuses.\u00a0The Washington Post. <\/em>Retrieved from https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/grade-point\/wp\/2016\/11\/09\/mobs-of-tearful-angry-students-protesting-trump-victory-swarm-campuses\/?utm_term=.b001f4882ee2<\/a><\/p>\n

Visual References<\/p>\n

Yun Soo Kim. (2016, November 9). Devastated Cornellians mourn the election of Donald Trump at cry in. The Cornell Daily Sun. Retrieved from http:\/\/cornellsun.com\/2016\/11\/09\/devastated-cornellians-mourn-election-of-donald-trump-at-cry-in\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Calder, A. (2016, December 1). Colby College students march against hate, Trump immigration plans. Kennebec Journal.<\/em> Retrieved from http:\/\/www.centralmaine.com\/2016\/12\/01\/colby-college-students-march-against-hate-trump-immigration-plans\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Paradise_50. (2015, July 23). Trump Corn Silk. Retrieved from https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/64766527@N08\/19937032551\/in\/photostream\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Worch, R. (2015, February 5). Worch Capital. Retrieved from http:\/\/worchcapital.blogspot.com\/2015\/02\/psychology-of-markets-confirmation.html<\/a><\/p>\n

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On Tuesday, November 8th, 2016, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. Although his supporters were excited and triumphant, many students at Colby College and other campuses across America were left shell-shocked. Students at Ivy League colleges \u2013 and those at Ivy League wannabees \u2013 seemed especially devastated and stunned. The website The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7393,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80216,266316,130416],"tags":[266297,885],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3310"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7393"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3310"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3747,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3310\/revisions\/3747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}