I was debating about sharing this, but I believe there is some value to be had in the examination of “thinking about how we think.”
WARNING: If you believe in Santa Claus stop reading right now.
The morning our Capitol was attacked, my officer in charge called me to ask if I was seeing the events unfolding back home. I was, quite frankly, surprised and not surprised by what was happening. What I saw was deeply troubling. I only had a couple hours to process things and figure out what I wanted to say at quarters.
As a chief, my basic function is to man, train and equip. What I discussed that morning was an attempt to equip my Sailors with a research-based lens through which to inform that day’s, and certainly the coming weeks, events as they unfold in the news and social media. My goal was to introduce some “Meta cognitive” ideas – ideas on how to think about how we think.
I’d like to share them with you.
Those ideas are: ideological division, affective division, and intellectual humility. In addition, I also wanted to show the linkage between these ideas and how they contribute to the political polarization we are seeing today.
Ideological divisions are when two or more parties have different views on policies and issues. They all want to get us to “right,” but they have different ideas on how to get there. Ideological divisions are not, in and of themselves, negative occurrences within an organization. If you think about it, our life experiences help each of us understand the world around us. We all have different life experiences. Many of us qualify these differences under the term “diversity.” Diversity is a great thing—it is a source of our strength and it is something that will allow us to grow stronger as an organization.
Sometimes, a malignancy can form nested within an ideological division know as an affective division. An affective division occurs when people begin to perceive members of one political group, believe those in groups holding opposing political views are immoral or unintelligent. An affective division leads one group to see the other group as less than human. It is highly caustic in an organization as diverse as the military. An affective division creates an intellectually inflexible individual who sees the world in binary terms: right and wrong, good and evil, us and them. No middle ground. It is an intellectually obstinate worldview. It is the opposite of intellectual humility.
Political scientists assert “intellectual humility reflects the degree to which people evaluate the accuracy of their own beliefs and are willing to change their beliefs when presented with compelling evidence that they are wrong.” I suspect intellectual humility, without a concerted effort, decreases as we grow older. An example is that as children most of us believed in Santa Claus. The evidence was all there: cookies & milk, the tree, all manner of products and television specials lauding this magical person who left presents for us once a year. But over time, most of us began picking up clues that led to where we are now: Santa exists only in our imaginations.
Researchers Elizabeth Krumrei-Mancuso and Brian Newman examined how intellectual humility, regarding one’s political views, is related to feelings of warmth vs. coldness toward people of a different political worldview. Spoiler alert: there is an inverse relationship. They found that people who are high in intellectual humility show less affective division, even when they have strong political convictions.
According to another researcher Shauna M. Bowes, “intellectual humility (is) significantly associated with lower affective polarization.” Bowes’ research revealed that “participants high in intellectual humility indicated that they felt less negatively toward members of political outgroups, would be less distressed by a family member marrying a political outgroup member, and viewed political outgroup members less negatively on characteristics such as arrogant and unintelligent.”
So as each of us forms our opinions about “what right looks like” with regard to what is happening in U.S. politics, try to identify within ourselves what meta cognitive processes might be occurring that are driving our thoughts and emotions. I offer that approaching the various ideological divisions we encounter with intellectual humility positions each of us to better understand recent history and to transform a national tragedy into an opportunity for growth and development. We are all going to have our own opinions, but by understanding some of the underlying processes informing our opinions, each of us will be better equipped make sound judgements in the days and weeks ahead of us.
Finally, if you think this discussion is rambling, you should have seen me at quarters.
