Ideology

Self-Deception: Ideology as a Perceptual Filter Toward the Social World

Self-deception based on one's ideological bias can be found from basic perceptual judgments to sophisticated higher order reasoning. Recent research in cognitive psychology sees ideological bias as a failure of information processing. This bias consists of stereotyped reasoning in which new information is distorted in order to make it conform to existing beliefs. People are far from the detached information processors that normative models of human judgments would prescribe. The term bounded rationality means that people are prone to systematic predictable cognitive biases. People are prone to systematic and predictable errors in making judgments and decisions because of ideological links between target judgments and the group to which the people feel they belong—in other words, revealing their “ideology-bounded rationality.” People appear to be motivated by various factors to reach conclusions that color the self in a favorable position, leaving one immersed in self-deception.

Group affiliation can bias people to perceive the same stimulus differently and to draw inferences that protect and promote the interests of their in-group, as people derive their self-esteem in part from the meaningful groups to which [Page 497]they belong. A classic demonstration of this self-deception based on social categorization can be found in Albert Hastorf and Hadley Cantril's “They saw a game” study. In this study, although students at Dartmouth and Princeton Universities viewed the same film of their respective school's football teams on November 23, 1951, it seemed from the results that they had watched two different games. While Dartmouth students tended to see Princeton's rule violations and Dartmouth's appropriate responses, Princeton students saw a continuing pattern of Dartmouth's rough play and occasional Princeton reprisals. The students from the two schools saw their side as the hero and the other side as the villain, regardless of reality.

As mentioned above, self-deception based on one's own desirable state of mind (ideology) is not only found in higher order reasoning, such as the fairness of play in a football game, but can also be found in perceptual judgments. For example, Emily Balcetis and David Dunning found that thirsty undergraduates see a water bottle in front of them located closer than it actually is. In relation to political ideology, Eugene Caruso and his colleagues have demonstrated that during the 2008 presidential campaign, Democrats perceived the face of Barack Obama to be lighter, whereas strong Republicans tended to see Obama's skin tone as darker than did liberals. Visual representations of the candidate fit coherently with the desire to see one's own group members positively.

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