Besides Paperwork, What Does HB 1087 Hope To Accomplish With Its Demand For Ideological Diversity

A few decades back, a good friend told me that my job as a teacher was to "comfort the troubled and trouble the comfortable." If one Googles that phrase, one will frequently find it attributed to theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In all likelihood, the statement paraphrases a statement made by the fictional Mr. Dooley, a character created by Finely Peter Dunne.

That phrase popped into my head when I read the text of House Bill 1087, "An Act to promote intellectual diversity at certain institutions of higher education." Encountering intellectual ideas that differ from one's own is indeed uncomfortable. In fact, as this Scientific American article points out,

To avoid coming to undesirable conclusions, people can fly from the facts and use other tools in their deep, belief-protecting toolbox.

This New Yorker article points out that emotional appeals may be a bit more effective, but emotions are not scientific :

Providing people with accurate information doesn’t seem to help; they simply discount it. Appealing to their emotions may work better, but doing so is obviously antithetical to the goal of promoting sound science.

One should add that emotional appeals are rarely intellectual.

This is not new science. As this Atlantic article points out,

“A man with a conviction is a hard man to change,” Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schacter wrote in When Prophecy Fails, their 1957 book about this study. “Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point … Suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: what will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before.” 

This doubling down in the face of conflicting evidence is a way of reducing the discomfort of dissonance, and is part of a set of behaviors known in the psychology literature as “motivated reasoning.” Motivated reasoning is how people convince themselves or remain convinced of what they want to believe—they seek out agreeable information and learn it more easily; and they avoid, ignore, devalue, forget, or argue against information that contradicts their beliefs.

One should be wary of assuming facts not in evidence, but one would hope that Representatives Sue Peterson  Haugaard, and Qualm and Senators Stalzer, Brock Greenfield , Langer, and Maher, the legislation's prime sponsors would be aware of these studies.

One would also hope that they, conservatives in good standing, would not be proposing this legislation merely to cause liberals discomfort. If so, they might be creating more committed liberals. The research indicates that people of all stripes will not change their minds merely because they are confronted by different ideas.

This desire to confirm one's beliefs despite evidence cuts both ways. Conservatives, trained from youth in the way they should go, will double down on their beliefs despite facts or theories to the contrary. The alleged liberal dominance of South Dakota Universities should not have an adverse effect on young conservatives' ideological certainty.

One wonders what the sponsors of the legislation hope to accomplish as they demand public universities expose students to a "variety of ideological and political perspectives." (As a side note, "ideological" and "political" are not necessarily synonyms for "intellectual.") Perhaps the sponsors merely want to comfort themselves as they cause discomfort for university officials who have to do the reams of paperwork this legislation necessitates.