Resisting changing our minds
This chapter is about the biases that make people resist new ideas and rethinking what they believe. They affect everyone, including animal activists themselves.
Moral licensing
For example, someone who rescues abandoned animals might feel they already do enough and push back against veganism. And someone who's vegan might feel they don't need to think about wild animals or the future.
Not wanting to listen
- Hostile attribution: thinking others have bad intentions, even when they don't.
- Reactive devaluation: brushing off a proposal just because it came from someone on the "other side."
- Ostrich effect: avoiding bad news, like an ostrich hiding its head.
Defending the way things already are
- Status quo bias: preferring that everything stays the same.
- System justification: defending the current system, even against your own interests.
- Belief perseverance: holding on to a belief even when there's evidence against it.
- Anchoring bias: relying too much on the first piece of information we get.
- Commitment bias: continuing to do something just because we've done it before, especially in public.
- Cognitive dissonance: the discomfort of having beliefs that clash with each other.
The affect heuristic
We often decide based on emotions rather than information. Since our emotions were shaped by the environment we grew up in, they tend to defend what we already know.
In short
- Doing good can make us complacent.
- Several biases make us reject new ideas and defend how things are.
- Emotions can also keep us stuck in old ways of thinking.