What if the first step to becoming an independent thinker is to accept you're probably not one?
By Casey The Thought Loop. A blog to spark my own critical thinking.
I was just loading the dishwasher while thinking about a TikTok video I watched which was talking about herd mentality. It made me think, (herd mentality alert!) how much of what I think is actually my own opinion?
You only have to watch a series of Traitors to see how herd mentality works.
Socrates, this Greek philosopher, had this famous theory which was something like,
I know that I know nothing.
To be fair, I think he might have had a point.
Applying this to this my theory about being an independent thinker…
If we all believe that we are independent thinkers, are we leaving ourselves more vulnerable to the influences that we believe we are immune to?
The moment we eat some humble pie and accept we might not be as independent as we think, could it be that we become better equipped to question the things that influence us?
Incoming irony
While we like to think we are independent thinkers, we are not convinced that everyone else is!
Communications researcher Davison called this the third-person effect. His 1983 research explored a tendency to believe that persuasive media messages have more influence on other people than on ourselves.
His findings indicated that most of us can watch a social media video and immediately see how it might influence somebody else, but we think we ourselves are immune.
You couldn't make this up! :D
Do you think you could be guilty of this? Do you ever examine your own reaction with the same suspicion?
And if we believe we're particularly good at spotting manipulation, might that confidence make us less inclined to question a message that happens to agree with us?
To clarify, this third-person effect concerns our perceptions of influence. It doesn't establish that admitting our susceptibility automatically makes us harder to manipulate.
Independent thinking isn't the absence of influence
Long after emptying the dishwasher and going off in a tangent to read more about my hypothesis, it unravelled a bit.
We learn from other people constantly such as from parent, teachers, colleagues, friends, books, the news and organisations/ people we follow online. Listening to a friend who is recommending a decent pub for a roast dinner, and being influenced by this is not the same thing as being manipulated, and it doesn't mean we've stopped thinking for ourselves.
So perhaps the more useful definition of independent thinking is being willing to examine those influences.
This leads me to the power of critical thinking which I don’t think has ever been as important as it is now in this era of AI.
Questioning where did this belief come from? What evidence supports it? What would make me change my mind?
Socrates would have a field day studying social media. The spirit of his questioning feels very relevant to a world in which information (and over confident sharing of opinions) arrives faster than we can possibly evaluate it.
My ‘Conspiracy theory’ theory
What I’d like to clarify is that I believe in humility and critical thinking over endless suspicion!
There's a danger in taking it too far. If we decide everything is manipulation, we can become so suspicious that we dismiss reliable evidence along with misinformation.
Being open-minded doesn't mean giving every claim equal weight, it is having the open mindedness to form an opinion while accepting that it might need revising if you get new data.
That feels relevant to my work in communications, too. We spend a lot of time thinking about what messages might persuade an audience.
I have to remind myself that we should spend just as much time examining the assumptions and biases we're bringing to the conversation ourselves.
Perhaps independent thinking isn't about being free from influence, its about being aware of it.
So my critical-thinking question to you is Is the safest way to think independently to accept that you're probably not as independent as you think?
Sources for my Sunday morning ramblings
W. Phillips Davison (1983), The Third-Person Effect in Communication — the original research on perceived differences between media influence on ourselves and on others.
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