{"id":22938,"date":"2019-05-16T14:54:54","date_gmt":"2019-05-16T21:54:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=22938"},"modified":"2019-05-16T14:54:54","modified_gmt":"2019-05-16T21:54:54","slug":"confirmation-bias-trigger-warning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/confirmation-bias-trigger-warning\/","title":{"rendered":"Confirmation Bias… Trigger Warning!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have a bad habit.\u00a0 I am one of those people who share news stories and articles that often have an underlying message attached.\u00a0 For example, I sent my brother-in-law an article from the Mayo Clinic entitled, \u201cWalking: Trim Your Waistline, Improve Your Health\u201d.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 I have sent my wife numerous articles with encouraging lines like \u201cRunning may be the single most effective exercise to increase life expectancy.\u201d[2]<\/a>\u00a0 I sometimes send my more home-bound friends helpful pieces with titles like \u201cWhy Wouldn\u2019t You Travel, When There Are So Many Benefits to Traveling?!\u201d.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

Part of what is at work in these exchanges is that I have a kind of confirmation bias, where when I read something that resonates with what I already believe, think or do, I see it as really worthwhile and true.\u00a0I would never share an article that claims that people should run less, or eat worse, or stop exploring new cultures.\u00a0That would go against my core beliefs!<\/p>\n

Confirmation bias is alive and well in American society in 2019.\u00a0 It is something that we all have within us and that is contributing to our polarized society, especially when it comes to political hot-topics.\u00a0 In a way, the new book by authors Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt called\u00a0The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure<\/em>, is a book that fits quite well our current times.<\/p>\n

The backbone of the book is the idea that there are \u201cthree Great Untruths\u201d that are the culprits behind much of the politicized, divided and fearful age in which we live.\u00a0 The authors describe these three \u201cuntruths\u201d as, What doesn\u2019t kill you makes you weaker, always trust your feelings, and life is a battle between good and evil people<\/em>.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

The obvious rejoinder to each of these three is that \u201cwhat doesn\u2019t kill you makes you stronger\u201d (so, bad things will happen, but you need to be resilient), \u201cdon\u2019t always trust your feelings\u201d (so, it isn\u2019t always about how you feel<\/em>), and \u201ceverybody has both good and bad within them\u201d (so, people are complicated, give them some grace).\u00a0These \u201ccomebacks\u201d are just my own initial thoughts as I read the book.\u00a0 This seems to be the point that the authors are making.\u00a0 That the times in which we live get things backward, or have them off-center, and that there is a more nuanced and even \u201cclassical\u201d way of thinking about the human condition and our place within the world.<\/p>\n

According to the authors, some of the symptoms of the problems of our age include: rising rates of teen depression and anxiety, rise of overprotective or \u2018helicopter\u2019 parenting and the decline of free play[5]<\/a>, as well as college campuses boiling over with anger, as well as fragility.\u00a0They write, \u201cThe rising political polarization in the United States, in which universities are increasingly seen as bastions of the left, has led to an increase in hostility and harassment from some off-campus right-wing individuals and groups.\u201d[6]<\/a>\u00a0 This story is set within the larger context of the United States in the years since 2012, where rising political polarization\u00a0<\/em>is simply part of the landscape of the country.<\/p>\n

Indeed, in a New York Times essay, a Middlebury College professor who was given a concussion by a crowd of angry protesters on a college campus puts it this way, \u201cin the days after the violence, some have spun this story as one about what\u2019s wrong with elite colleges and universities, our coddles youth or intolerant liberalism.\u00a0Those analyses are incomplete.\u00a0Political life and discourse in the United States is at a boiling point, and nowhere is the reaction to that more heightened than on college campuses.\u201d[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

This is another way of saying that we live in the age of Trump.\u00a0 But in truth, the age of Trump has followed closely on the heels of the Obama administration, which has set up a stark contrast between the two eras (rather than the usual theme of continuity, and continued progress in a certain direction that our country seeks to hold).<\/p>\n

So, in the context of our country today, this book fits right in because it is sure to affirm the confirmation bias of about half the readers.\u00a0 I found myself nodding along at certain sections, especially anything having to do with the importance of resilience, outdoor free-play, and how our orthodoxies can become rigid.\u00a0 At the same time, there were parts of the book where I was shaking my head, mostly because I can think of those whose biases are sure to be affirmed by what was written.<\/p>\n

As with all of the books that we read, I think about to whom I would recommend or share this book.\u00a0 The truth is, that I would probably recommend this book to some of my more grumpy, frumpy, and pessimistic friends, and even then, it would only be with a grain of salt.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a>\u201cWalking: Trim Your Waistline, Improve Your Health,\u201d Mayo Clinic, accessed May 16, 2019,\u00a0https:\/\/www.mayoclinic.org\/healthy-lifestyle\/fitness\/in-depth\/walking\/art-20046261<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a>Gretchen Reynolds, \u201cAn Hour of Running May Add 7 Hours to Your Life,\u201d\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, April 12, 2017,\u00a0https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/04\/12\/well\/move\/an-hour-of-running-may-add-seven-hours-to-your-life.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a>\u201cWhy Wouldn’t You Travel When There Are So Many Benefits to Traveling?!,\u201d Claim Compass, November 30, 2017,\u00a0https:\/\/www.claimcompass.eu\/blog\/benefits-of-travelling\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a>Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt,\u00a0The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure<\/em>\u00a0(New York: Penguin Press, 2018), 4.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a>Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt,\u00a0The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure<\/em>\u00a0(New York: Penguin Press, 2018), 126.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a>Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt,\u00a0The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure<\/em>\u00a0(New York: Penguin Press, 2018), 126.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a>Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt,\u00a0The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure<\/em>\u00a0(New York: Penguin Press, 2018), 127.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a bad habit.\u00a0 I am one of those people who share news stories and articles that often have an underlying message attached.\u00a0 For example, I sent my brother-in-law an article from the Mayo Clinic entitled, \u201cWalking: Trim Your Waistline, Improve Your Health\u201d.[1]\u00a0 I have sent my wife numerous articles with encouraging lines like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1529],"class_list":["post-22938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lukianoff-and-haidt","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/103"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22938"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22939,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22938\/revisions\/22939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}