With the US more politically polarized than ever, behavioral economist 丹石 询问为什么会出现这种情况以及可以做些什么.
在他最近出版的作品中， Undue Hate: A Behavioral Economic Analysis of Hostile Polarization in US Politics and Beyond (麻省理工学院出版社, 2023), the associate professor of economics explores the growth in what he calls “affective polarization,” a term used to describe the emotional hostility that underpins much of today’s political rhetoric.
以行为经济学家的身份运用他的工具, 斯通解释了为什么我们经常在客观上发展错误, 过于消极, beliefs about the other side—causing us to dislike them more than we should. He employs simple mathematical concepts and models to illustrate how we are able to misjudge those we disagree with, 在政治和非政治背景下.
In a book launch event on campus earlier this semester, where he sat down with fellow economist 马丁亚伯, Stone said the affective polarization so common today goes back much further than most people think, 回到20世纪80年代. 一个分水岭时刻的例子, 他解释说, was the nomination of conservative judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court by US President Ronald Reagan, which was blocked by Democrats and was perceived by both parties as a politically motivated incident causing repercussions for decades.
另一个因素是媒体行业. 进入90年代, 说石头, we saw the emergence of blatantly partisan media in the form of talk radio (“which is mostly right-leaning”) and cable networks like Fox 新闻 and MSNBC. “Then in the 2000s came internet media and now social media, so for a variety of reasons the US has sort of become steadily more affectively polarized.”
情感两极分化的增长, 说石头, often means people find it increasingly harder to disagree with others without disliking them as well. “总的来说, 每当人们不同意任何事情, 无论是在政治上还是在其他方面, we have a bias toward disliking the other person too much as a result of that disagreement.”
Human biases come in a number of different forms, 说石头. “很多人都熟悉确认偏误, where we tend to interpret new information to confirm what we already believe.” Similar to that, 他解释说, is something called motivated reasoning (a.k.一厢情愿的想法), 它关注的是, 并且更加信任, 我们愿意相信的信息是真的.
这个词大多数人都不熟悉, 虽然,石头继续说, 就是过度精确的偏见, 人们以为自己知道的比实际知道的多.” This is a concept Stone has been exploring in the class he’s been teaching this semester (ECON 3561, Behavioral Economics and Socially Responsible Capitalism). “We do a sort of trivia quiz where students get to rate their confidence levels and knowledge on various topics. 它们都是对/错或是/否的答案, 所以如果你毫无头绪, 你的答案应该是“50%”,他说. 平均, 解释石头, 学生们的回答显得过于自信, failing to answer as many questions correctly as they predicted. “一个学生, 例如, said he was one hundred percent confident of answering a question that he actually got wrong.”
Another type of bias Stone mentioned is false consensus bias. “This is thinking that we have more in common with others than we really do. You wouldn't think that that would cause undue hate, but it does—all the time.” He gives the example of a social safety net: the idea, 通常受到民主党人的青睐, that higher taxes are a good thing to provide for a caring society. 就连共和党人也必须意识到这一点, supporters of the concept who are guilty of false consensus bias might reason. So, 由此得出, 让他们反对, 一定有不可告人的动机, 而隐藏的动机通常是不好的,斯通说。.
Other evidence that hostility is driven by bias and false beliefs include that we overestimate the other side’s hostility and perhaps cause them to overestimate the readiness of their opponent to resort to political violence.
There’s no quick fix to the polarized situation that society now finds itself in, 观察到的石头, 但这并不意味着没有希望. “I do have faith in the ability of people to come to appreciate truth over a long enough period of time. The arc of history is long, but I think there could be ways to make it work.”
政界出现了一线曙光, 说石头, 比如犹他州的共和党州长, 斯宾塞考克斯, 谁发起了 倡议 to combat polarization, promoting respectful dialogue. 还有政治领导人, 科技界的大人物, 比如马克·扎克伯格, 也要发挥作用, 说石头. “They need to commit to changing social media algorithms, 例如, in order to incentivize posts that are actually informative and depolarizing.”
As for the average person looking to do their bit to counter polarization, Stone has this advice:
“The world is complicated, so we need rules of thumb to figure how to act on a day-to-day basis. So, 下次你讨厌什么东西的时候, 我不是说完全不讨厌它, 但是试着把你的仇恨减半.“最终目的是, 他说, is to “make intellectual humility cool” and make polarizing, 网上的极端主义内容“不酷”,这不会在一夜之间发生.
(媒体聚焦：阅读2023年对斯通的采访 沙龙.com)
