20. Alief
Wireless Philosophy, Cognitive Biases, 4:00. Original title: CRITICAL THINKING - Cognitive Biases: Alief [HD]
Summary
Laurie Santos (Yale University) introduces the concept of alief as part of a series on cognitive biases.
The skywalk thought experiment
Santos asks us to imagine walking onto the Skywalk at the Grand Canyon, a glass bridge suspended four thousand feet above the Colorado River, and looking down. Most people would feel terrified: a racing heart, sweaty palms, a tight grip on the railing. Yet the Skywalk is, by every measure Santos cites, perfectly safe. It is bolted in place with hundreds of steel girders, exactly as strong as it would be with an opaque floor, and thousands of visitors cross it every year without a single fall; it is safer than crossing the street or riding in a car. So why are we still afraid?
Belief versus alief
The disconnect points to what the philosopher Tamar Gendler called an alief: an automatic, habitual, belief-like attitude toward things we instinctively like, dislike or are simply used to. Gendler chose the term because aliefs resemble beliefs while being affective, associative, automatic and arational. On the Skywalk, you believe you are safe, otherwise you would not have stepped out, but you simultaneously alieve that you are at risk, which is what produces the sweaty palms. Aliefs do not track what we actually believe to be true.
Why aliefs are sticky
Even once we realise that an alief does not match what we believe, it does not go away; it keeps guiding our behaviour anyway. Santos gives several examples: fear at horror films such as Jaws, even though we know the shark is plastic; the psychologist Paul Rozin's finding that people do not want to eat a piece of chocolate shaped into something unappetising, even though it would taste exactly the same; and the cognitive scientist Fiery Cushman's finding that people are reluctant to strike a plastic hand with a hammer, even knowing it is not real.
Aliefs in more serious cases
Santos extends the idea to bias: someone who has lived in a society structured by racial bias may believe that African-Americans and Caucasians are equal, while their aliefs still carry a whole host of implicit racial biases; someone from a society where men tend to be doctors and women tend to be nurses may believe women are just as good as men at science, while their aliefs differ. Santos notes that psychologists have recently shown such biased aliefs can play a bigger role in hiring decisions than people think.
Key takeaway
Whenever you hesitate to touch a plastic spider, cry at a film you know is fictional, or notice one of your own mistaken biases, that is your aliefs, not your beliefs, at work.