What is this Substack about (4)? The impact of culture and the built environment on perceptions of rationality and on between–group polarization

Theme 4 of 4

This Substack is about four inter-related themes, each of which is described in a separate brief essay. Theme 1 was described here, Theme 2 here, and Theme 3 here. The current post describes the fourth and final theme: Culture and polarization.

Casino gambling has the characteristic of seeming eminently idiotic to people who would not consider it, but perfectly reasonable to many (though not all) of the people who do it. It points to ways in which the gamblers themselves are misguided because of their physical and social environment along with their faulty reasoning and their ignorance of the facts. But it also points to how outgroups looking in at gamblers from the outside are misguided because of their simplistic understanding of gamblers’ environments, values, and beliefs and their readiness to attribute judgments of truth and rationality that are a better reflection of their own limited experience and knowledge than they are of the limited experience and knowledge of the gamblers themselves. Because casino games are much simpler and more mathematical than most of the complex, real world environments in which social groups find themselves, focusing on those games allows for compelling analyses as to when and how both sides in this ingroup (casino gambler)–outgroup (non-casino gambler) comparison get it right and wrong. I hope and expect that a close look at this particular dynamic will provide insight and humility when assessing the rationality of judgments and beliefs, whether those assessments are of ourselves, of members of ingroups with whom we affiliate, or of members of outgroups against whom we differentiate ourselves, outgroups who often seem troublingly and unjustifiably off base.