Another weird and frustrating phenomenon when you get sucked into an argument with conservative types (something I usually try to avoid bothering with anymore) is that there’s this very narrow set of people they’re convinced are key figures, even “leaders” on any given topic. Talk about climate change and they bring up Al Gore. Talk about women’s rights and they bring up Anita Sarkeesian.
To this day I have NO IDEA what any of those people have ever said on those topics, and in most cases, I never even heard of them outside of conservative complaints and memes. I would never know the name Anita Sarkeesian if she wasn’t one random blogger out of thousands that an obscure niche of people went positively ballistic over. I’ve never heard of anyone accepting the existence of global warming just because non-scientist Al Gore said to.
If I tell them this they never believe it. They’re completely convinced that the beliefs they hate actually revolve around some random youtubers or B-list politicians they randomly elevated into their own bugbears and the idea that the people they fight hardest against actually have barely any influence or fame outside their own subculture seems almost impossible for them to accept.
George Soros.
I always see people saying George Soros pays people like me to protest (I wish), or buses people to vote on battleground states, some way or another he has us under our thrall.
I don’t even know who the fuck George Soros IS
I don’t even feel bothered to Google him and find out- he’s utterly irrelevant to my life. But apparently all liberals are on his payroll somehow.
I, too, never heard of George Soros before just recently.
They could make up absolutely any name in these arguments and it would have just as much meaning to me. “You’re only pro-vaccine because you’re shilling for Jiminy Ferpendoodle!!!”
I’ve heard this referred to as the central fallacy of the authoritarian mindset: It’s not that authoritarians don’t care about facts, it’s that facts aren’t real until they are confirmed by an Authority. Of course no liberal believed in Global Warming until Al Gore said so! Why would they believe it, until Someone In Charge said it? And moreover, if you can prove That Person Isn’t Really An Authority, the facts will change! See also:
- Why Creationists are obsessed with disproving Darwin – not his theory, but the man himself. As if casting doubt on Darwin-a-dude-born-in-eighteen-fucking-oh-nine-for-chrissake-’s personal beliefs will somehow completely disprove the ensuing two centuries of scientific research.
- Why various idiot politicians try to legislate away Global Climate Change, as if making laws against the ocean will stop it from rising.
I’m sure you could add on ten thousand bullet points but it’s Saturday and I don’t wanna do the research when I could be cleaning my kitchen and playing Minecraft.
This is actually supported by psychological and sociological research into authoritarianism; on @ampersandworm‘s comment on doing the research, I have to recommend Bob Altemeyer’s excellent (and free!) book, The Authoritarians, where he summarizes his research into the authoritarian mindset in a layman accessible manner (and, yes, I do love the irony that, in response to a comment about how conservatives only believe something when supported by An Authority, I’m linking to An Authority for discussion on that mindset). It is really worth a read to gain some insight into the mindset of American authoritarians.
For a more succinct summary, however, have a comment from Prof. Altemeyer on Trump and Authoritarian followers (bolding from me):
We know a lot about authoritarian followers, but unfortunately most of what we know indicates it will be almost impossible to change their minds, especially in a few months. Here are a dozen things established by research.
- They are highly ethnocentric, highly inclined to see the world as their in-group versus everyone else. Because they are so committed to their in-group, they are very zealous in its cause.
- They are highly fearful of a dangerous world. Their parents taught them, more than parents usually do, that the world is dangerous. They may also be genetically predisposed to experiencing stronger fear than most people do.
- They are highly self-righteous. They believe they are the “good people” and this unlocks a lot of hostile impulses against those they consider bad.
- They are aggressive. Given the chance to attack someone with the approval of an authority, they will lower the boom.
- They are highly prejudiced against racial and ethnic majorities, non-heterosexuals, and women in general.
- Their beliefs are a mass of contradictions. They have highly compartmentalized minds, in which opposite beliefs exist side-by-side in adjacent boxes. As a result, their thinking is full of double-standards.
- They reason poorly. If they like the conclusion of an argument, they don’t pay much attention to whether the evidence is valid or the argument is consistent.
- They are highly dogmatic. Because they have gotten their beliefs mainly from the authorities in their lives, rather than think things out for themselves, they have no real defense when facts or events indicate they are wrong. So they just dig in their heels and refuse to change.
- They are very dependent on social reinforcement of their beliefs. They think they are right because almost everyone they know, almost every news broadcast they see, almost every radio commentator they listen to, tells them they are. That is, they screen out the sources that will suggest that they are wrong.
- Because they severely limit their exposure to different people and ideas, they vastly overestimate the extent to which other people agree with them. And thinking they are “the moral majority” supports their attacks on the “evil minorities” they see in the country.
- They are easily duped by manipulators who pretend to espouse their causes when all the con-artists really want is personal gain.
- They are largely blind to themselves. They have little self-understanding and insight into why they think and do what they do.
Points number 6, 7, 8 and 9 are what lead to the “argument from authority” tendency that OP noted.
So I just read this article about how people end up fucking up whatever task they’re doing when they feel like they’re being watched. Scientists have discovered that the sense of being observed actually SHUTS OFF a part of the brain, the inferior parietal cortex.
Given the fact that women are constantly watched in our society, and we are constantly REMINDED that we are being watched by people making fun of fat, “ugly”, or gender-nonconforming women, it makes me wonder how many women have messed up important tasks or projects or just day-to-day activities because A PART OF OUR BRAIN is permanently being deactivated?
Like talk about a fucking handicap.
Women are constantly held under the microscope- whether we are attractive or unattractive, the gaze of patriarchy never ends.
Just last week I was walking my dog and bent over to literally pick up poop. Suddenly I heard whistling and looked up cause I knew I was the only person around. Sure enough, about 300 feet away, some construction worker was perched on top of a building, grinning at me and calling out stuff I luckily couldn’t hear because he was so goddamn far away.
I wonder what it does to women to have this constant source of stress hanging over us, each and every day, knowing we are being scrutinized and examined no matter what we’re doing. I wonder how many more accomplishments, life-changing discoveries, inventions, etc would have been achieved by women if we didn’t have this constant brain-handicap imposed on us by men.
Hey this is actually a really well-documented sociological phenomenon known as ‘stereotype threat’, you’re 100% right! A really interesting book that discusses it is ‘Delusions of Gender’ by Cordelia Fine (i s2g i feel like i should be being paid to advertise that book, it feels like i’m constantly promoting it, but it’s just SO GOOD). I have the ebook if you’d like the file? She has a chapter on it in one of her other books too, ‘A Mind of its Own.’
Like here’s an example of stereotype threat – being reminded of gender stereotypes before a math test (like watching a movie with strong depictions of gender roles, or reading a made-up article asserting women’s so-called inferiority) can make women’s scores lower, especially if they have to check a box that reads ‘female’, since it reinforces their fears of that negative stereotype with themselves. (Obviously the book goes into more detail, and has concrete examples/sources). And the same pattern holds true for racial stereotypes. It’s really really scary, obviously, considering how much depictions in pop culture tend to trump up those harmful stereotypes. :-/
ETA: I just realized it might not be -immediately- obvious how that’s related to your post, and I’m paranoid now, LOL – my point was that being made aware that we’re women and have certain expectations put on us not only makes us more likely to follow those expectations (a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy), it makes us hypernervous, thus impeding our ability to perform. Cordelia Fine brought up a more specific point/explanation – energy we‘re devoting to worrying, even subconsciously, is brain power we’re forced to sacrifice from using on the task at hand. :-/ More great news, LOL.
This is so true. The first time I pursued an engineering degree I ended up performing terribly and switching out because I was in the minority as a woman and had no confidence and was always treated like I was inferior and every move I made was heavily watched and critiqued. Flash forward 5 years and I’m back getting a second degree – pursuing science again – and I give so much less of a shit how I’m perceived, my appearance, etc and have resolutely decided to believe in myself. All these years I thought I was “bad” at math? I’m not. Chemistry used to be French to me? It’s now my favorite subject. It’s amazing how much this shit affects us. And even despite that we are outperforming men in college. Imagine how amazing we could be if we truly realized our potential – every single one of us.
Reasons why I quit after two courses in automotive mechanics was because I was the only female student, the other males either were too awkward to talk to me or patronized me, and I had a constant feeling of having to prove myself by being better than them but most of them had knowledge of cars they recieved from their dads that I was never given the privilege of getting. I felt like I wasn’t getting any of it, and gave up thinking I was wasting my time.
I bet if I went back I could ace the fucking course because I absolutely give no shits now. But I don’t care for that stuff anymore and will probably pursue something in the sciences.
Also related: self-objectification and habitual body monitoring. Women are watched and judged so much that even when we’re not being watched, we’re watching ourselves, consciously and subconsciously. Monitoring ourselves for conformity to beauty standards, making sure we’re not acting too ‘manly’, making sure we’re not acting too ‘girly’, etc.
You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur. -Margaret Atwood
Even when we’re alone, we self-objectify and self-judge and engage in habitual body monitoring, because it’s how we’ve been taught to survive in a world full of men scrutinizing us. It literally makes us throw poorly, and get bad scores on tests, and very probably holds us back significantly in most other areas of life as well.
I don’t know if this and the social phenomenon in the OP (which I didn’t know about, thanks for the info and excellent analysis!) do similar things in the brain, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
So let me get this straight, in Monopoly if you give one player more money to start out it’s “unfair” but if you do it in real life it’s “capitalism”?
You know what, I’m going to tell you guys a story.
In my Sociology class a few semesters ago, our prof had us break off into groups and, much to our naive joy, began distributing Monopoly boards! We had no idea what was going on but yay! Games! Of course, once our group, and a number of others, got the board we began to work at setting up and distributing the money…
until suddenly our prof told us to put the money down and pick up the dice.
“Roll the dice and sort yourselves from highest to lowest,” our teacher commanded. "Now, the highest number is the upper class. The next one is upper middle class. The next two or three are middle class. The last person is in poverty.“
Well, as the person who rolled a two this was startling and not wholly welcome news.
From that point the game changed entirely. We had to hand out the money so that the “upper class” had this fucking mountain, and then less for upper middle, even less for middle, and I didn’t get any triple digit bills. We would all collect different amounts from passing go as well.
The biggest change though? Going to jail. Upper class didn’t. Period. Upper middle class could go but they only had to stay for one turn or they could immediately pay their way out. Middle class had some pretty easy guidelines for when they could pay to get out. As lower class, it was really easy for me to wind up in jail and REALLY hard to get out. But since I was working with so little money when everyone else had so much I was in jail all the time because there was no “game over”. If I couldn’t pay I had to go to jail for a certain period of time. I had to take out loans with interest I could never pay back just to get out only to wind up back in it again, rolling dice turn after turn hoping to be able to get out.
It was simultaneously the most enlightening and most awful game I had ever played. I was bored and frustrated and a little terrified about it all. And it wasn’t only me. I would never win, I sort of accepted this, but it was amazing how the middle classes reacted as well. They were stressed. Because they were always that close to either being able to one-up the upper class or from crashing into poverty with me. They had to fight constantly just to stay in the middle.
(I should also mention that the upper class player in one group felt so bad for the lower income players that they ended up overhauling their entire game and creating a “socialist” society instead. I’m not sure how our teacher felt about that one.)