"What's My Bias?" by Lee De-Wit

A book about the psychological reasons that underlie politics. This eminently readable book covers, among other things: 

• our innate morality of fairness (and the different interpretations we have of what fairness means); 
• fundamental aspects of personality such as openness to change, conscientiousness, extraversion, empathy and anxiety which govern our political choices;
• cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias;
• our tendency to vote for someone whose face suggests competence;
• the way the media frame stories;
• fake news (and fake science) and how to combat it;
• and why people don't vote.

I really enjoyed it. It was well written and easy to read with plenty of anecdote to balance the academic stuff. I knew quite a lot of it already (I wrote about cognitive dissonance as part of my own PhD thesis) but that was combined with the new stuff in a way that frequently made me think.

And as a collector of expressions I loved 'astroturfing' and 'sockpuppetry'.

Many years ago, I taught Lee A-level Physics. He has since become an academic Psychologist (working at the same department of Psychology in Cambridge where I spent the third year of my undergraduate degree). He makes certain criticisms of his schooling (not enough education about politics). Sorry Lee!

Selected quotes:

• "Political certainties are like the Berlin Wall. They appear to be concrete and immoveable, but they can crumble and fall almost overnight." (Introduction: The Political Animal)
• "ultimately many political arguments come down to the morality of fairness." (1 It’s Not Fair!)
• "if social animals are going to cooperate, they need to develop a keen sense of fairness – to prevent individuals taking advantage of others in the group." (1 It’s Not Fair!)
• "do you attribute someone’s wealth to the actions of that individual or their circumstances in life?" (1 It’s Not Fair!)
• "Absolutist thinkers are more likely to see something as inherently right or wrong, whereas contextualist thinkers are more likely to allow for circumstances that could have influenced someone’s behaviour." (1 It’s Not Fair!)
• "if you have a business that transports goods, you didn’t build the roads; if you rely on educated workers, you didn’t educate them yourself." (1 It’s Not Fair!)
• "You may well have worked hard, but that can’t explain success on its own, because there are plenty of people out there who work hard." (1 It’s Not Fair!)
• "people who identify as left and right wing differ substantially in the way they see two key moral principles: group loyalty and respect for authority" (1 It’s Not Fair!)
• "conservatives... display moral sensitivities about a wider range of topics." (1 It’s Not Fair!)
• "the greater activity in the amygdala shows that conservatives have a different cognitive process for thinking about risk, making them more sensitive to potential threats." (2 Personal Politics)
• "the political left rolls with the good and the political right confronts the bad" (2 Personal Politics)
• "there is a close correlation between the extent to which people view the world as a dangerous place, and the extent to which they think things like group loyalty and respect for authority are important moral principles." (2 Personal Politics)
• "liberals ... tend to respond more positively to change and uncertainty, which, in practice, might mean they are more likely to want to change what they perceive as social inequality, support minority rights and welfare, and be more tolerant of complexity." (2 Personal Politics)
• "Conservatives ... might be more diligent and careful (e.g. in appearance, or in their work), with greater respect for convention and tradition, perhaps being more likely to defend the status quo and support religious and traditional values." (2 Personal Politics)
• "when our feelings and the facts don’t match up, we’ll find some way to make them match." (3 Why You Always Think You’re Right)
• "Experts – pundits, commentators, talking heads who get quoted in newspaper articles as experts, and so on – ...  are wrong more often than they’re right (and that applied to TV experts in particular). And ... they weren’t right any more often than an informed layperson would have been." (3 Why You Always Think You’re Right)
• "viewing someone’s face for less than a second is enough for people to make a rating of their ‘competence’ ... the favoured candidate tends to win elections." (4 What’s In A Face?)
• "we have a tendency to assume that people who are more attractive are also more intelligent." (4 What’s In A Face?)
• "When we’re repeatedly exposed to something, its familiarity means we are more likely to be welcoming of it." (5 Making The Headlines)
• "‘Astroturfing’, the practice of hiding the sponsors of a political, advertising, religious or any other kind of message to make it appear as though it originates from ordinary folk (creating ‘fake grassroots’), and ‘sockpuppetry’, the deliberate creation of false online identities to promote opinions – including fake news – have been rampant for years." (6 Faking It)
• "if you want something to be effective in changing people’s behaviour, make it social." (7 Are You Being Nudged?)
• "just realising you have control over something can be inherently rewarding in its own right." (8 A Silent Majority)
• "voters in marginal constituencies are far more likely to be targeted by political parties, increasing the feeling that their vote counts, as opposed to voters in safe seats who frequently complain of being ignored and overlooked." (8 A Silent Majority)

This is an important book in the light of the new use of social media by political parties and the increasing polarisation of the electorate. It is also a good read, short and not at all heavy-going. It should be on your bookshelf!

August 2021

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God