Name: Class:
The Selective Laziness of Human Reasoning
By Tania Lombrozo for NPR
2016
Tania Lombrozo, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, explores the
psychological elements that contribute to a person’s inclination to value his or her own opinions over the
opinions of others. As you read, take notes on how the experiments the author references support her claim.
[1] Democrat: "Those arguments by Republicans are
preposterous!"
Republican: "Those arguments by Democrats are
absurd!"
Sound familiar?
There are plenty of reasons why political disputes can
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be divisive, and a host of psychological mechanisms
that contribute to a preference for one's own views.
[5] For one thing, political preferences aren't just "Untitled" by Pavlofox is licensed under CC0.
reasoned opinions; they're often markers of personal
2
and cultural identity with strong emotional resonance. For another, we tend to expose ourselves to sources
that support our own views, reinforcing rather than challenging our beliefs.
3
An article forthcoming in the journal Cognitive Science adds another mechanism into the mix: We're more
critical of arguments oTered by others than of those we produce ourselves. Authors Emmanuel Trouche, Petter
Johansson, Lars Hall and Hugo Mercier describe this as the "selective laziness of reasoning." We reserve
eTortful scrutiny for others and often give ourselves a free pass.
To test this idea, the researchers exploited a phenomenon known as choice blindness: Under the right
conditions, many people fail to recognize that a choice they made previously has been swapped with an
alternative. For example, people who choose one of two photographs as more attractive will often fail to
notice when the photograph they're subsequently presented isn't the one they chose, and will nonetheless go
on to explain why they found the (non-chosen) option more attractive. The phenomenon has been replicated
for choices in a variety of domains, including jam and tea preferences, moral judgments and political attitudes.
Trouche and colleagues adapted this technique to the case of arguments and, in so doing, created situations in
which people were asked to evaluate arguments that they didn't recognize as their own. This revealed that
people were willing to generate arguments that — when presented as coming from another person — they
could readily recognize as _awed.
1. Divisive (adjective) tending to cause disagreement or hostility between people
2. Resonance (noun) the quality of a sound that stays loud, clear, and deep for a long time
3. Cognitive Science is a journal for the study of minds and other intelligent systems.
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Here's how it worked. Across two studies, more than 400 participants recruited online were presented with
word problems that required them to draw inferences from limited information. For example, they might read
about a fruit and vegetable shop that carries apples as well as other products and learn that none of the apples
are organic. They would then be asked what follows "for sure" from this information, and were given a variety
of options to choose from: that all the fruits are organic (false), that none of the fruits are organic (unknown),
that some of the fruits are not organic (true), and so on. Participants made a selection and provided an
argument to justify their choice.
[10] In a subsequent phase of the experiment, participants were presented with the same problems, along with
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choices and arguments purportedly provided by other participants. In each case, the choice was presented as
an alternative to what the participants had selected initially, and participants were invited to reconsider their
own choice in light of the argument.
But within this set was a fake: a problem for which the participant's original choice had been swapped, such
that the "alternative" response was the one that the participant had actually provided, and the corresponding
argument was the participant's own. About half of participants failed to notice the swap: They were the victims
of choice blindness. For these participants, the experimenters succeeded in creating the conditions they were
after, putting people in the position of evaluating arguments they had produced as if they had been produced
by someone else.
And what they found was this: that people rejected their own arguments over 50 percent of the time, failing to
end them sufciently compelling to change what they thought was their initial response. In other words, people
were less critical of the very same arguments when they produced them themselves than when they were later
presented as coming from another person. Evaluating these arguments also led to an overall improvement in
performance: Accuracy increased from around 40 percent in the initial phase to around 60 percent after
participants evaluated their own argument in disguise.
There are several ways to interpret these results. The authors of the study take them as evidence for a theory
according to which human reasoning is principally geared towards eTective argumentation rather than
knowledge-seeking. But for present purposes, we can draw a timely, if more modest, conclusion: that when it
comes to evaluating arguments across the political spectrum — especially those that challenge our own views
— we would do well to bear in mind the selective laziness of reasoning.
It makes sense to evaluate other people's arguments with careful scrutiny, but we should apply the same
consideration to our own.
©2016 Tania Lombrozo for National Public Radio, Inc. News report titled “The Selective Laziness Of Human Reasoning” was originally
published on NPR.org on August 1, 2016, and is used with the permission of NPR. Any unauthorized duplication is strictly prohibited.
Unless otherwise noted, this content is licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license
4. Purportedly (adverb) as appears or stated to be true, though not necessarily so
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Text-Dependent Questions
Directions: For the following questions, choose the best answer or respond in complete sentences.
1. PART A: Which of the following best identiees the author’s main claim in the text?
A. People are naturally inclined towards their own arguments because they are too
stubborn to consider another mode of thinking.
B. People are more adamant about proving that someone else’s opinion is wrong
rather than proving why their opinion is right.
C. People tend to prefer their own opinions over others because they consider
their sources to be more reliable.
D. People will argue to support incorrect information merely for the satisfaction of
winning an argument.
2. PART B: Which detail from the text best supports the answer to Part A?
A. “For one thing, political preferences aren't just reasoned opinions; they're often
markers of personal and cultural identity with strong emotional resonance.”
(Paragraph 5)
B. “Under the right conditions, many people fail to recognize that a choice they
made previously has been swapped with an alternative.” (Paragraph 7)
C. “In other words, people were less critical of the very same arguments when they
produced them themselves than when they were later presented as coming
from another person.” (Paragraph 12)
D. “The authors of the study take them as evidence for a theory according to which
human reasoning is principally geared towards eTective argumentation rather
than knowledge-seeking.” (Paragraph 13)
3. How does the detail “The phenomenon has been replicated for choices in a variety of
domains, including jam and tea preferences, moral judgments and political attitudes” from
paragraph 7 contribute to the text?
A. It proves that this phenomenon occurs in a variety of other reasoning contexts.
B. It shows that this phenomenon only occurs in certain instances.
C. It proves that this phenomenon only occurs for people’s most valued opinions.
D. It shows that a person considers all their opinions to be equally important.
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Discussion Questions
Directions: Brainstorm your answers to the following questions in the space provided. Be prepared to
share your original ideas in a class discussion.
1. Why is it important to be open-minded towards other people’s opinions? How do our
perspectives change when considering the opinions of others?
2. Have you ever argued in favor of something that you knew was false? If so, why?
3. In the context of the text, how do humans understand the world in terms of themselves?
Do you think this is egotistical? Why are why not? Cite examples from the text, your own
experience, and other literature, art, or history in your answer.
