The Folly of Fools (5 page)

I hardly need the above result to convince myself, because if I am in a big city, I experience the effect almost every week. I am walking down the street with a younger, attractive woman, trying to amuse her enough that she will permit me to remain nearby. Then I see an old man on the other side of her, white hair, ugly, face falling apart, walking poorly, indeed shambling, yet keeping perfect pace with us—he is, in fact, my reflection in the store windows we are passing. Real me is seen as ugly me by self-deceived me.

Is the tendency toward self-inflation really universal in humans? Some cultures, such as in Japan and China, often value modesty, so that if anything, people might be expected to compete to show lack of self-inflation. Certainly in some domains modesty rules, but in general it seems that one can still detect tendencies toward self-inflation, including self over other in terms of good and bad. Likewise, as in other cultures, inflation often applies to friends, who are seen as better than average (though less strongly than self in some cultures and more so in others).

By the way, recent work has located an area of the brain where this kind of self-inflation may occur. Prior work has shown that a region called the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) seems often to be involved in processing self-related information. Even false sensations of self are recorded there, and the region is broadly involved in deceiving others. One can suppress neural activity in this region (by applying a magnetic force to the skull where the brain activity takes place), deleting an individual’s tendencies toward self-enhancement (while suppression in other regions has no effect).

An extreme form of self-adulation is found among so-called narcissists. Though people in general overrate themselves on positive dimensions, narcissists think of themselves as special and unique, entitled to more positive outcomes in life than others. Their self-image is good in dominance and power (but not caring or morality). Thus, they seem especially oriented toward high status and will seek out people of perceived status apparently for this reason. Though people in general are overconfident regarding the truth of their assertions, narcissists are especially so. Because they are overconfident, narcissists in the laboratory are more likely to accept bets based on false knowledge and hence lose more money than are less narcissistic people. They are persistent in their delusions as well. They predict high performance in advance, guess they have done well after the fact when they have not, and continue to predict high future performance despite learning about past failure—a virtuoso performance indeed. Calling someone a narcissist is not a compliment—it suggests someone whose system of self-enhancement is out of control, to the individual’s disadvantage.

Derogation of Others Is Closely Linked

In one sense, derogation of others is the mirror image of self-inflation; either way, you look relatively better. But there is an important difference. For self-inflation, you need merely change the image of yourself to achieve the desired effect, but for derogation of others, you may need to derogate an entire group. Exactly when would we expect this to be advantageous to you? Perhaps especially when your own image has been lowered—suddenly it becomes valuable to deflect attention onto some disliked group—so that by comparison, you do not look as bad as they do.

This is precisely what social psychology appears to show—derogation of others appears more often as a defensive strategy that people adopt when threatened. Contrast two sets of college students who have been told (at random) that they scored high or low on an IQ test. Only those scoring low later choose to denigrate a Jewish woman (but not a non-Jewish) woman on a variety of traits. Apparently association with intellectual achievement is sufficient reason to denigrate the woman if one’s own intellectual powers are in doubt. Likewise, the same “low scorers” (as they are told they are) are more likely to complete “duh” and “dan” as “dumb” and “dangerous” when subliminally primed with a black face. So let us say that there is some evidence that I am stupid (in fact, fictitious). I apparently lash out by denigrating members of allegedly intelligent groups (against which there may be other biases) while calling attention to negative stereotypes of allegedly less gifted ones. Incidentally, the derogation does make me feel better afterward, as measured by an interview, so the act may fool me as well.

As we shall see later (Chapter 11), derogation of others—including racial, ethnic, and class prejudices—can be especially dangerous when contemplating hostile activity, such as warfare.

In-Group/Out-Group Associations Among Most Prominent

Few distinctions bring quicker and more immediate psychological responses in our species than in-group and out-group—almost as much as, if not sometimes more than, for self and other. Just as you are on average better than others, so is your group—just as others are worse, so are out-groups. Such groups, in and out, are pathetically easy to form. You need not stoke Sunni or Catholic fundamentalism to get people to feel the right way; just make some wear blue shirts and others red and within a half-hour you will induce in-group and out-group feelings based on shirt color.

Once we define an individual as belonging to an out-group, a series of mental operations are induced that, often quite unconsciously, serve to degrade our image of the person, compared with an in-group member. The words “us” and “them” have strong unconscious effects on our thinking. Even nonsense syllables (such as “yaf,” “laj,” and “wuhz”), when paired with “us,” “we,” and “ours,” are preferred over similar syllables paired with “they,” “them,” and “theirs.” And these mechanisms can be primed to apply to artificial groups, experimentally created—those with different-colored shirts, for example. We easily generalize bad traits in an out-group member while reserving generalization for good traits performed by an in-group member. For example, if an out-group member steps on my toes, I am more likely to say, “He is an inconsiderate person,” though with an in-group member I will describe the behavior exactly: “He stepped on my toes.” In contrast, an out-group member acting nicely is described specifically—“she gave me directions to the train station”—while an in-group member is described as being “a helpful person.” Similar mental operations serve to derogate others compared to self. Even minor positive social traits, such as a smile, are imputed unconsciously more often to in-group members than to out-group ones.

This bias begins early in life, among infants and young children. They divide others into groups based on ethnicity, attractiveness, native language, and sex. By age three, they prefer to play with in-group members and also begin to display explicit negative verbal attitudes toward out-group members. They also share with adults a strong tendency to prefer groups to which they have been randomly assigned, to believe that their own group is superior to others, and to begin to treat out-group members in a harmful fashion.

Recent work shows a similar mental architecture in monkeys regarding in-groups and out-groups. When a test is performed on a monkey in which it responds visually to matched facial pictures of in-group and out-group members, corrected for degree of experience with them, there is a clear tendency to view the out-group member longer—a measure of concern and hostility. Likewise, a monkey will attach an out-group orientation to an object an out-group group member is looking at and vice versa for an in-group member. Finally, male monkeys (but not female) more readily associate out-group members with pictures of spiders but in-group members with pictures of fruits. The beauty of this work is that the monkeys were migrating in and out of different groups at various times, so one could control exactly for degree of familiarity. In-group members, for example, tend to be more familiar, but independent of familiarity, they are preferred over out-group members. That males more readily associate out-group members with negative stimuli, and in-group with positive, is consistent with work on humans in which men typically are relatively more prejudiced against out-group than in-group members.

The Biases of Power

It has been said that power tends to corrupt and absolute power, absolutely. This usually refers to the fact that power permits the execution of ever more selfish strategies toward which one is then “corrupted.” But psychologists have shown that power corrupts our mental processes almost at once. When a feeling of power is induced in people, they are less likely to take others’ viewpoint and more likely to center their thinking on themselves. The result is a reduced ability to comprehend how others see, think, and feel. Power, among other things, induces blindness toward others.

The basic methodology is to induce a temporary state of mind via a so-called prime, which can be conscious or unconscious and as short as a word or considerably more detailed, as in this case. The power prime consists of asking some people to write for five minutes about a situation in which they felt powerful, supplemented by having the subjects apportion candy among a group, while the low-power prime group writes about the opposite situation and is allowed only to say the amount of candy they hope to receive.

This modest prime produced the following striking results. When the subjects were asked to snap their right-hand fingers five times in succession and quickly write the letter
E
on their foreheads, an unconscious bias was revealed. Those who had been primed to feel powerless were three times as likely to write the
E
so that
others
could read it, compared to those primed to feel powerful. This effect was equally strong for the two sexes. The basic shift in focus from other to self with power was confirmed in additional work. When compared with those with a neutral prime, those with the power prime were less able to discriminate among common human facial expressions associated with fear, anger, sadness, and happiness. Again, the sexes responded similarly to the power prime, but in general women are better at making the emotional discriminations, and men are more likely to be overconfident. In short, powerful men suffer multiple deficits in their ability to apprehend the world of others correctly, due to their power and their sex. And since, at the national level, it is powerful men who usually decide for war, they have an in-built bias in the wrong direction, less oriented toward others, less inclined to value their viewpoint, with, alas, often tragic effects all the way around (see Chapter 11).

There must be a thousand examples of power inducing male blindness, but why not look at Winston Churchill? He experienced highs and lows in his life that were often nearly absolute. One moment he was the prime minister of the UK during World War II—one of the most powerful prime ministers ever—and the next moment he is an ex–prime minister with almost no political power at all. Similar reverses were associated with World War I. At the heights of his power, he was described as dictatorial, arrogant, and intolerant, the stuff of which tyrants are made; at low power, he was seen as introspective and humble.

Moral Superiority

Few variables are as important in our lives as our perceived moral status. Even more than attractiveness and competence, degree of morality is a variable of considerable importance in determining our value to others—thus it is easily subject to deceit and self-deception. Moral hypocrisy is a deep part of our nature: the tendency to judge others more harshly for the same moral infraction than we judge ourselves—or to do so for members of other groups compared to members of our own group. For example, I am very forgiving where my own actions are concerned. I will forgive myself in a heartbeat—and toss in some compassionate humor in the bargain—for a crime that I would roast anybody else for.

Social psychologists have shown these effects with an interesting twist. When a person is placed under cognitive load (by having to memorize a string of numbers while making a moral evaluation), the individual does not express the usual bias toward self. But when the same evaluation is made absent cognitive load, a strong bias emerges in favor of seeing oneself acting more fairly than another individual doing the identical action. This suggests that built deeply in us is a mechanism that tries to make universally just evaluations, but that after the fact, “higher” faculties paint the matter in our favor. Why might it be advantageous for our psyches to be organized this way? The possession of an unbiased internal observer ought to give benefits in policing our own behavior, since only if we recognize our behavior correctly can we decide who is at fault in conflict with others.

The Illusion of Control

Humans (and many other animals) need predictability and control. Experiments show that occasionally administering electrical shocks at random creates much more anxiety (profuse sweating, high heart rate) than regular and predictable punishment. Certainty of risk is easier to bear than uncertainty. Controlling events gives greater certainty. If you can control, to some degree, your frequency of being shocked, you feel better than if you have less control over less frequent shocks. Similar effects are well known for other animals, such as rats and pigeons.

But there is also something called an illusion of control, in which we believe we have greater ability to affect outcomes than we actually do. For the stock market, we have no ability to affect its outcome by any of our actions, so any notion that we do must be an illusion. This was measured directly on actual stockbrokers. Scientists set up a computer screen with a line moving across it more or less like the stock market average, up and down—jagged—initially with a general bias downward but then recovering to go into positive territory, all while a subject sits in front of the screen, able to press a computer mouse, and told that pressing it “may” affect the progress of the line, up or down. In fact, the mouse is not connected to anything. Afterward, people are asked how much they thought they controlled the line’s movement, a measure of their “illusion of control.”