Believing in order to Belong

Beliefs are socially influenced

Lionel Page writes,

Ideologies serve to justify a coalition’s claims externally and to coordinate and bind its members internally, while also developing a logic of their own.

We can look at the appeal of political beliefs on two levels. Taken at face value, they appeal to you based on their content. But at a deeper level, they appeal to you based on how they connect you to other people that matter to you.

Often, we think of choosing beliefs as an individual problem. From that standpoint, either your beliefs land on the truth or you suffer from “bias.”

But I do not look at epistemology that way. As you know, I say that we decide what to believe by deciding who to believe.

Social beliefs are truth-seeking to the extent that we choose who to believe based on prestige in the relevant domain. Often, credentials convey prestige, but we have to factor in that corruption can infiltrate the process of obtaining elite credentials.

Karlyn Bowman writes,

Whom do you trust when it matters? A surprising number of polls suggest that the answer is not experts, but those closest to us: friends and family. Last week, Gallup released a new poll on the sources Americans turn to for advice about their finances. … Forty-three percent said they asked friends and family for financial information and advice, followed closely by financial advisers and planners (41%), and financial institutions (36%). Twenty percent chose podcasts and separately, social media, books, and TV or radio programs.

Our assessment of the prestige of the individual is not the only determinant of who we choose to believe. Often, it is not even a major determinant. An important determinant of who we choose to believe is our desire to belong. We seek the approval of others.

In prehistoric times, we learned to try to avoid being expelled from the tribe. If you were cast out into the wilderness, you probably could not survive. If you knew how to gain the approval of others in your tribe, you probably thrived.

The need for tribal approval helps explain the attraction and persistence of beliefs that are not verifiably true. If holding a belief helps to make one a member in good standing of a tribe that is important to you, then you are motivated to hold that belief. We believe in order to belong.

We are highly motivated to share the beliefs of a tribe to which we feel attached. Call these tribal beliefs.

Non-falsifiable beliefs work best

Beliefs that are commonly understood to be true are not very tribal. A true belief that is shared by many tribes cannot be used as a distinctive marker to indicate membership in a particular tribe. If every tribe wears red paint on their forehead, then putting red paint on your forehead does not signify your tribe.

False beliefs, on the other hand, are very distinctive. They are strongly tribal. Your tribe’s false beliefs can act like being the only tribe wearing red paint.

The problem with false beliefs is that they are fragile. You are likely to encounter a lot of cognitive dissonance, as your false beliefs run into contrary evidence. Think of the cognitive dissonance caused by Copernicus or Darwin.

So the ideal beliefs from a tribal perspective are beliefs that are neither true nor false. They are beliefs about supernatural forces, or beliefs that are so contestable that they can never be shown to be true or false.

Do not think that only primitive peoples believe in the supernatural. To many people, “systemic racism” is real, and do not tell them otherwise. To other people, their pet conspiracy theory is real, and do not tell them otherwise.

Early in the 20th century, philosophers such as A.J. Ayer and Karl Popper scorned beliefs that were neither true nor false. They argued that beliefs had to follow from logic or be testable empirically. If it is not falsifiable, then it should be discarded as dogma.

But dogma persists. Non-falsifiable beliefs are probably the best glue for binding a tribe together. For example, in year 325, the Council of Nicaea ruled in favor of the belief that Christ embodied the spirit of God and against the Arian Christian belief that Christ was not on the same plane as the father. To me, this seems like a nonsensical issue to dispute¹, but as far as tribal beliefs were concerned, it was powerful. Indeed, tribes of Arian Christians persisted for hundreds of years afterward.

Very little of what Karl Marx believed can be rigorously tested. Ditto for Freud. For positivist philosophers, that is a bug. But for the purpose of spreading and perpetuating tribal commitment to Marx or Freud, it is a feature. Marxist believers have murdered millions. The Freudian belief in explaining behavior using the Oedipus Complex may have been weak scientifically, but in the mid-20th-century it was powerful in demonstrating your membership in an important intellectual tribe.

Contestable Beliefs

Many of our political beliefs sound like they can be evaluated scientifically. But in practice, they cannot be definitively proved or disproved. I call these contestable beliefs. In principle, they are not dogmatic, but in practice they are.

For example, some economists argue that Chinese imports were an important factor in creating the Rust Belt. Other economists tend to downplay China.² But that issue is contestable. I do not believe that it will be settled by scientific study. Most protectionists on the left and right blame the China shock. Free-traders are on the other side. People are locked into their particular tribe. Hardly anybody approaches the issue with an open mind.

As another example, consider beliefs about President Trump. When I post here, if I even hint that I think he is right about something, I get a wave of unsubscribes. If I even hint that I think he is wrong about something, well, the hostile comments speak for themselves.

I think questions about the impact of Mr. Trump are highly contestable at this point. But from the perspective of your tribe, chances are those questions seem settled and certain, one way or the other.

We believe in order to belong. Concerning Mr. Trump, I belong neither to the tribe that supports him nor the tribe that hates him. I suspect that in the general public, my ambivalent tribe is decently large. But on line, it might seem really small.

substacks referenced above:

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Why and how political ideas matter

1. and forgive me if I am not stating it correctly.

2. I am one of the latter. The Northeast and upper Midwest were hit by what we might call the Sunbelt Shock long before China entered the picture.