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 served to us by others. Each day we hear 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 chain of third parties, which qualities and intrests 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 other. The wider the impact of the matter on his social circle, the stronger the urge. The wide intrest in politics is an example of natural incline of people, to be part of the such discussions and social constructs discussing them. The mass media strive on this urge, feeding people with information that creates the stage for them to exercise their mental abilities in forming the opinions on the matter.
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 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 ma 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 aligiance to the clique. Sometimes, the more volatility there is, the stronger the connection. This is only partially explained by the above 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 changing one’s opinion 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 clique.
The attachment to the clique is strengthened by the following factor, 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 other cliques?
Fearing of feeling foolish inside, alienated by closest friends, and mocked and blamed for 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 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.