[MUSIC] Seeking coherence may also be a stumbling block. We tend to reject information that is incoherent with our beliefs. The more important a belief is, or the more deeply interconnected it is with related beliefs, the more difficult it is to change. Think, for example, of the belief in the importance of family honor. This is a core personal normative belief and any intervention aimed at devaluing family honor would be doomed to failure. Honor, however, is linked to many other beliefs about men and women, about their roles, purity, body integrity and how to maintain them. And about how to restore honor, once it has been lost. When we're dealing with such core beliefs, we are dealing with abstract concepts which are fundamentally tied to a constellation of specific exemplars and manifestation of such core beliefs and values. We saw these in lecture nine when I discussed schemas and the scripts they dictate. Honor may manifested in specific male and female behaviors, ways of acting, ways of responding to insults, ways of treating men and women, ways of dressing, ways of talking. All of which serve to inform the meaning of the original core concept of honor. Some peripheral manifestations of particularly beliefs and values may be inconsistent with other deeply held beliefs and values. For example, most parents value protecting and loving their children. Calling to attention to the fact that that particular practices such as female genital cutting may harm a child and are thus inconsistent with parental values, will motivate families to take action. People desire consistency between their factor beliefs, personal normative beliefs and actions. And pointing out an inconsistency will motivate them to resolve it, by changing either their existing factor beliefs, normative beliefs or future behavior. One of the reasons why collective discussion and deliberation may be very successful is that through discussion we are more likely to realize that there are inconsistencies in our ways of thinking and acting. And come to a shared agreement about how to remedy these inconsistencies. Finally, let us consider confirmation bias, previously discussed in the lecture about schema change. We tend to favor information that confirms our beliefs, especially if these beliefs are central ones. For example, in the case of belief about gender and race, we often treat information that is inconsistent with these beliefs as exception to the rule that ultimately remain unchallenged. The very successful and studious black student may be seen by some, hopefully not all, as a wonderful exception. As much as a successful female CEO of a Fortune 500 company could be seen as an unusual, exceptional occurrence. Another way that preexisting beliefs can be maintained is by reinterpreting discrepant information in a way that is no longer in conflict with our beliefs. For example, when a woman who cuts young girls was faced with information about the potential health risk of the practice, including infection and death. Her response was not irrational. She reported that of all the girls she had cut, very few fell ill and even fewer girls died of such and illness. She provided an alternative explanation for the infections, the existence of magic. Someone hated the girl and wanted her dead and the curse worked. We should not be surprised, even a scientist will not be motivated to abandoned a well established theory when faced with a few anomolies. In our eyes, magic is not an established theory. But we have to realize that in the eyes of the cutter it is. The mechanism by which she evaluates evidence and causal influences are much different from our scientific methodology. But given her criteria, her response makes perfect sense. Biases can reveal themselves in the way we interpret information, and even laws. For example, ambiguity in the wording of a law may lead to interpretation that ultimately supports the very behavior that the law wanted to combat. Consider the Myanmar child law prohibiting violence against children. The ambiguity as to the status of corporal punishment is evident from the wording. The law says willfully maltreating a child, with the exception of the admonition by a parent, teacher, or a person having the right to control a child, which is for the benefit of the child. Clearly, such wording is open to interpretation. So a parent who consistently beats his child, could construe his violence as a rightful admonition that clearly benefits the child by inducing him or her to behave in the appropriate way. Parents will be motivated, especially when providing with such an ambiguously worded law, to interpret their arguably violent behavior as rightful and helpful to the child. So as to preserve their view of themselves as good parents. Many of these biases stem from the way in which we organize and embed incoming information into a coherent cognitive system, which I have discussed in lecture nine. To conclude, factorial and personal normative beliefs are important elements of change. And we must be aware of how such reasons are frequently integrated into a rich web of other values and beliefs. Conversely, I also highlighted the kind of biases that may stall and even prevent belief change. Let us remember however, that personal belief changes will not be sufficient to change a social norm. Since actions are based on social expectation and these must change too, for norm change to occur. In the next lectures, I will describe some tools that can be employed to bring about collective belief change. Such tools enable an individual or an organization to catalyze the sort of normative change that may otherwise never occur.
