While your family’s situation is explained by lack of scope insensitivity, I’d like to put forward an alternative. I think the behavior you described also fits with rationalization. If you family had already made up their mind about supporting the Republican party, they could easily justify it to themselves (and to you) by citing a particular close-to-the-heart issue as an iron-clad reason.
Rationalization also explains why “even people who bother thinking for themselves are likely to arrive at the same conclusion as their peers”—it just means that said people are engaging in motivated cognition to come up with reasonable-sounding arguments to support the same conclusions as their peers.
Yeah, but if my mom’s parents were on one side of the fence, that would make it less likely for her to hop to the other side, right? She did seem like she thought the democrats were probably right about some things, but that those things were dwarfed by the larger issue. So I’m still mostly convinced this instance was a lack of scope insensitivity.
it just means that said people are engaging in motivated cognition to come up with reasonable-sounding arguments to support the same conclusions as their peers.
Ah yes, good point. I’m guilty too, haha. A few years ago I engaged in some motivated cognition to convince myself there were solid secular reasons to oppose gay marriage, since everyone I knew and respected was against it even though they claimed to believe in the separation of church and state.
While your family’s situation is explained by lack of scope insensitivity, I’d like to put forward an alternative. I think the behavior you described also fits with rationalization. If you family had already made up their mind about supporting the Republican party, they could easily justify it to themselves (and to you) by citing a particular close-to-the-heart issue as an iron-clad reason.
Rationalization also explains why “even people who bother thinking for themselves are likely to arrive at the same conclusion as their peers”—it just means that said people are engaging in motivated cognition to come up with reasonable-sounding arguments to support the same conclusions as their peers.
Yeah, but if my mom’s parents were on one side of the fence, that would make it less likely for her to hop to the other side, right? She did seem like she thought the democrats were probably right about some things, but that those things were dwarfed by the larger issue. So I’m still mostly convinced this instance was a lack of scope insensitivity.
Ah yes, good point. I’m guilty too, haha. A few years ago I engaged in some motivated cognition to convince myself there were solid secular reasons to oppose gay marriage, since everyone I knew and respected was against it even though they claimed to believe in the separation of church and state.