People form their opinions, based not on the deep understanding of the subject or first-person experience, but on the listening to “what people say”. It is not just a matter of laziness, but also the fact that it is impossible to gain a knowledge of the world without it being chosen, prioritized, interpreted and then served to us by others. Each day, we listen to the news on economics, security, health etc’, without even realizing that we are consuming information, that is served to us in a digested form by the long chain of third parties, who’s qualities and interests are rarely known to us. Most people lack the awareness of this fact on one hand, and feel a strong urge to be knowledgeable and form their opinion on “matters that matter” on the other. The wider the impact of the matter on the social circle, the stronger the urge. The wide interest in politics is an example of people’s natural incline to be a part of discussing opinions and social constructs discussing them. The mass media strive on this urge, feeding people with information that creates the stage to exercise people’s mental abilities in forming the opinions on the matter and express them.
With the time a person forms his views based on the sources of information that he “trusts”, rather than a result of learning things in depth. That immediately should explain the fact, that people are sometimes “not consistent” in their views in regard to judging different political actions. The same action, can be supported or opposed to, depending on how the “sources” of information interpret them.
Eventually, the person finds himself belonging to a group of people sharing his sources and their “view of the world”. I call this group a clique. The fact that perplexed me a lot, is that person can experience a volatile inconsistency in the interpretation of the facts, that he consume from his sources, and still somehow, keep unshaken allegiance to the same sources. Sometimes, the more volatility there is, the stronger the connection. This is only partially can be explained by the fact that person lacks deep personal insights on matters which makes him being easily manipulated (apropro, the extent of the issues that people lack the understanding in, may surprise, and might include the very basic tenets of society). I also beleive, that if things were solely dependent on “scrutinizing” the sources trustfulnes, people would change the opinions more often. However, I think that changing one’s opinion also exerts an exuberant psychological price on the individual. The price consists of three elements :-
- The personal price of diminishing ego. Changing one’s opinion can only come after painful realization, that the person lacks adequate abilities to understand what’s really going on. It comes with a price of feeling used, foolish and easily manipulated. This also might induce the person with fear for his future decisions.
- The price of being expelled from his closest social circle (the clique). The person can lose friends and antagonize the closest social circle he acquired during the years. He didn’t acquire the new one yet, and so may find himself in an uncomfortable social vacuum around him.
- The price of feeling humiliated by the members of the new clique he’s trying to align with, who might not miss the opportunity to make him personnaly reponsible for supporting his previous views.
The attachment to the clique is strengthened by the following factors: How vocal the person was in his support for the clique ? How many actions of the clique he justified in the past? How “adversory” he was to people expressing other views?
Fearing of feeling foolish inside, alienated by closest friends, and mocked and blamed for his past mistakes by others, is putting a giant barrier for the person to change his opinion on anything. Any individual will mobilize all resources available, to avoid this psychological and social burden of changing the “world view”.
In summary, people’s alignment themselves with different views, are driven not by the facts or people’s true understanding of the matter or objective facts presented to them, but by fear of the social and psychological price that a person can pay for changing his opinion.