The creator of Dilbert studied economics in college. He muses on the effects of this on his thinking in a blog:
The primary skill of an economist is identifying all of the explanations for various phenomena. Cognitive dissonance is, at its core, the inability to recognize and accept other explanations. I’m oversimplifying, but you get the point. The more your brain is trained for economics, the less it is susceptible to cognitive dissonance, or so it seems.
The joke about economists is that they are always using the phrase “On the other hand.” Economists are trained to recognize all sides of an argument. That seems like an easy and obvious skill, but in my experience, the general population lacks that skill. Once people take a side, they interpret any argument on the other side as absurd. In other words, they are relatively susceptible to cognitive dissonance.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
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2 comments:
My understanding of cognitive dissonance is that when people hear information they don’t like, their brains produce unpleasant feelings, presumably through some kind of chemical process.
So one thing that would be interesting to do is to give people drugs that surpress the bad feelings associated with unpleasant information.
Another thing to do is to train people to like different things. Presumably what allows an economist to be able to consider conflicting information without suffering cognitive dissonance is that what they “like” is constructing an accurate picture, usually with goals like economic efficiency, rather than a particular position. The goal of classical education used to be teaching people to like what they should; unfortunately, now, that there’s anything in particular that “should” be liked is highly disputed.
I guess, though, I think I slightly disagree with Scott Adams. I doubt that the reason economists are immune to cog/dis is because of their skill set of considering all the options (although the learning of this skill set certainly is part of it), but instead, I think the reason is that economists have learned to "like" something different than the general population.
I think on a large scale, you're right. Economists' brains are a little different because they have learned to enjoy (or at least, not dislike) a wide range of options.
As far as a C.D. look at it, it is probably through training that economists acclimate their brains to accepting multiple answers for a given problem. Whether the result is that economists "like" something different, or whether they simply don't dislike it... that may be another story.
For what it's worth, the comments on Adams' blog explain his improper use of Cognitive Dissonance, and point out that the man to whom he refers is more political scientist than economist. So really, the argument belongs in a larger scope. Still....
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