Questioning your beliefs

The question as to the extent people are in control of their

decisions, and the extent to which they simply follow other

people, is important to Deanna Kuhn.

She believes that Critical Thinkers should see thinking as a

form of argument, because individuals’ beliefs are chosen from

among alternatives on the basis of the evidence for them.

However, her research caused her increasingly to question

the extent to which individuals actually do hold their beliefs

on the basis of evidence, instead of as a result of social

pressures.

Deanna Kuhn’s rather alarming conclusion is that many

people don’t or can’t give adequate evidence for the beliefs

they hold. Worse! People are unwilling or unable to consider

revising their beliefs when presented with evidence against

them. Kuhn holds that reasoned argument requires, at the

very least, this ability to distinguish between the theoretical

framework and the physical evidence.

Cascading information

Cascade theory is the idea that information cascades down the

side of an informational pyramid — like a waterfall. If people

don’t have the ability or the interest to discover something

for themselves, they find that adopting the views of others is

easier. This act is without doubt a useful social instinct and

an individual relying on information passed on by others is

often quite rational. (After all, thinking is difficult and energy‐

sapping, as I explain in the earlier section ‘Jumping to con-

clusions: The cost of fast thinking’.)

Unfortunately, following wrong information is less rational,

and that’s what often happens. People cascade uselessly in

everyday ways, like so many wildebeest fleeing a non‐existent

lion. A lot of economic activity and business behaviour,

including management fads, the adoption of new technologies

and innovations, not to mention the vexed issues of health‐

and‐safety regulation, reflect exactly this tendency of the herd

to follow poor information.