The Sky's Blueness is Different than Whether an Attitude about a Person is "Right" or "Wrong"
We often see our perceptions of the social world to be as "true" as are our perceptions of the physical world. And this is a problem.
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One of the most robust general findings in the field of social psychology is this: People often mistake “social reality” for “physical reality” (see Ross & Nisbett, 1991). Across a broad range of studies, cutting across decades, social psychologists have famously found that people tend to believe that their social attitudes are just as real as are their understanding of facts about the physical world. And this tendency is problematic at the levels of :
How people understand colleagues at work
How people think about romantic partners
How people perceive political issues
How people process whether a leader of a social group is “good” or “bad”
… and beyond.
One of the most robust general findings in the field of social psychology is this: People have a hard time separating their understanding of the social world, which is largely a world constructed by humans via the creation of narratives in social contexts, from their understanding of the physical world, which is largely created by physical stimuli such as the specific wavelength of a ray of light.
From the false consensus effect (i.e., the tendency to overestimate the degree to which others will agree with our attitudes; see Krueger & Clement, 1994) to our strong tendency to conform to erroneous judgments of others (see Sherif, 1935) to our tendency to pay particular attention to information to materials that are consistent with our take on the social world (see Geher, 2019)—and more—we have all kinds of biases in our perceptions of the social world that tend to lead us to, simply, see the social world as being as real as is the physical world (even though it is not!).
So we might think that some political stance (e.g., George H. W. Bush was a terrible president) as being just as real as is our understanding that the sky is blue.
We might feel that our attitude about some particular celebrity (e.g., Will Smith should forever be held in disdain because of his public actions) to be just as “right” as is our attitude about a physical fact such the fact that the earth revolves around the sun.
And so forth.
Processes that Promote our Tendency to Conflate Social and Physical Reality
The field of social psychology has, profoundly, over the past century, documented a broad array of processes that lead people to see their social attitudes (e.g., attitudes about other people) as being just as “real” as their understanding of the physical world (see Ross & Nisbett, 1991).
These processes include the tendency to be relatively unempathetic when trying to estimate what others think about some situation (e.g., of course that person must think that Trump is an idiot—anyone with even a smidge of morality and a brain knows that!). These processes also result from our tendency to choose to pay attention to information that is consistent with our own values rather than information that contradicts our values (e.g., a self-identified “conservative” is likely to watch Fox News while a self-identified “liberal” is likely to watch CNN). In fact, we have a broad array of psychological processes that implicitly encourage us to embrace the ideas that we hold and to more easily dismiss contradictory evidence (see Ross & Nisbett, 1991).
In many ways, our entire psychology of the social world seems geared to implicitly encouraging us to maintain and validate our current attitudes and beliefs and to dismiss information that is incongruous with these beliefs.
And in so many life domains, this is a problem.
Why Our Evolved Social Psychology Can Be So Problematic
The fact that we seem to have a broad array of evolved social psychological processes that encourage us to see our social realities as being just as real as are physical realities leads to social problems at so many levels. Here are just a few examples:
It is hard for people who feel passionately about some political stance to feel a smidge of understanding or empathy for those who represent “the other side”—and this fact underlies so many problems in the political landscape today.
In small communities, someone who has been accused of some transgression might find themselves falling fully from grace—from the status of near-royalty to dirt. With no in between.
In some situations, a family member might accuse another family member of being horrible, fully expecting everyone to see this person in that same way—as if a person’s relative ranking on “horrible-ness” is as objective as is their height or weight.
In a work situation, someone might tell you some gossip about a colleague that, to their mind, essentially puts that colleague in “cancel territory”—and you might well feel all kinds of pressure to see that person in that same light. As if the reality is clearly black or white. And you may well conform to this negative attitude about said colleague—and never look back. As if it is somehow physically factual.
And so forth.
Bottom Line
We humans are a funny bunch—for lots of reasons! One psychological tendency that leads to problems of the human condition pertains to the fact that, in so many ways, people tend to see “social reality” (their attitudes and beliefs about others in the social world) as being just as real as physical reality (such as the facts that the sky is often perceived as blue and the fact that the moon orbits the earth).
Our inability to truly understand how social reality is largely constructed by human communications within some social communities while physical reality is rooted in, simply, the observable facts of the physical universe, can be quite problematic.
This issue can help us understand why people are sometimes outraged by the actions of others (what in the world was he thinking!?). This issue can help us understand large-scale political attitudes (that person watches Fox News? Ewwwww!!!!). This issue can help us to understand why people sometimes fall from grace in the eyes of the public (I thought he was a great guy until I found out that he did that. In light of what he did, he is dirt—and everyone knows it!).
And so forth.
The reality of the human psychological experience, in fact, is a reality of multi-factorial causation. There are a broad array of factors that underlie human behavior. And, in fact, any and all behaviors have a plurality of causes that exist—at multiple levels.
Human behavior is complex. And it is far from perfect.
Perhaps understanding that we have an often-erroneous bias toward thinking that social reality is every bit as “real” as is physical reality can help us to see others in our worlds with nuance and compassion. And even grace.
After all, at the end of the day, we all have a ticket on the same ride.
References
Geher, G. (2019). Own Your Psychology Major! A Guide to Student Success. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Krueger, J., & Clement, R. W. (1994). The truly false consensus effect: An ineradicable and egocentric bias in social perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(4), 596–610. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.67.4.596
Ross, L., & Nisbett, R.E. (1991). The Person and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology. New York: McGraw Hill.
Sherif, M. (1935). A study of some social factors in perception. Archives of Psychology, 27(187) .