Context-appropriate beliefs
This is one of the most useful and most frustrating things I have ever learned.
Sometimes people hold apparently contradictory beliefs. Like in class someone might clearly be able to explain why anecdotes are not data, and that you should not use anecdotes to make purchasing decisions. Then after class a friend says to them, “I’ve been thinking of getting a Palm Pre because it performed well in the tests I read about”. So they talk their friend out of it, because they bought a Palm once and the screen stopped working after three days.
In class, they totally believe that anecdotes are not data. Out of class, they totally believe that their personal anecdote trumps data. They’re being completely truthful to what they believe and it probably would not occur to them to compare the two beliefs.
The reason they don’t experience conflict is because the two beliefs are never active at the same time. The right belief for a situation comes to mind only in that situation, which is usually similar to the situation in which you learned it. You learn about anecdotes vs. data in the context of a class; you learn about how to give advice in the context of your friendships.
This is how beliefs frequently work (I’ll spare you the social cognitive science unless you really want it in which case I’ll have to go and look it up). It’s pretty normal, and it’s hard for me to think of it as hypocrisy or negligence when it’s socially adaptive for all parties involved.
There’s nothing wrong with it, but it drives me up the fucking wall. I know it’s not cheating, but it feels like cheating even though it’s not because:
1. They are performing well in class and will get good grades
2. They are strengthening a friendship by giving valued advice to a friend
3. They will never have to know, think about, or resolve any inconsistency in their beliefs. They really do get to have their cake and eat it too.
All the advantages of choosing the right response for the right situation, and none of the cognitive dissonance that comes with being aware that you’re doing that.
I don’t know how to do that to the same degree. I certainly have conflicting beliefs that I let conflict, and beliefs that I haven’t realized conflict, but when I learn something that’s directly applicable to specific real life situations, it doesn’t get filed under “Things To Believe In a Class Context”, it gets filed under “Things That Are True About Anecdotes Versus Data”, which isn’t tagged with a specific context.
I’d like to think about this in some way that doesn’t frustrate me but I don’t know what that would be.
