The faith ladder to unshakeable beliefs
It's useful to keep in mind the psychology of decision-making.
Preconceived notions about zoning, property rights, street design, and vehicle regulations shape public opinion—and those opinions, in turn, influence decisions shape the built environment.
Stereotypes are handy shortcuts that our brains take when sizing up a situation. In the broadest sense, stereotypes are convenient, simplified ways of understanding complexities based on what you already think or know to be true. Stereotypes aren’t all good or all bad, and there’s no sense in telling yourself you’ll never make swift judgments based on them. It’s part of being human.
The trouble comes when we stick with a stereotype, even in the face of conflicting evidence. After watching National Lampoon’s European Vacation, you may have formed a stereotype that a roundabout is a multi-lane, urban racetrack capable of trapping unsuspecting tourists (or any American). After all, even though the movie is a slapstick comedy, you’re all too familiar with that one multi-lane roundabout at the shopping center and people just catapult right through hardly noticing yield signs or crosswalks which is all the proof you need that the director included that scene because it’s 100 percent accurate.
But what do you do with that stereotype after sitting through a TED Talk describing how modern roundabouts can be engineered to be the world’s safest and calmest type of intersection? Do you approach the new evidence as a skeptic willing to learn, or as one clinging to dogma?
William James was a famous thinker in the 1800s, and sometimes labeled the father of American philosophy. He described a “faith ladder” as a useful framework for understanding how people cling to certain beliefs. Here’s the progression of beliefs outlined in 1911’s The Principles of Psychology:
There is nothing absurd in a certain view of the world being true, nothing contradictory;
It might have been true under certain conditions;
It may be true even now;
It is fit to be true;
It ought to be true;
It must be true;
It shall be true, at any rate true for me.
What begins as a possibility can harden into a conviction, even if the evidence doesn’t fully support it. They can climb up the faith ladder and be added to our list of unshakeable truths.
You may have read Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, published 100 years after James’ book. Kahneman’s book about decision-making was (maybe still is) a popular reading assignment for project management and corporate leadership training. He sorts the psychology of judgment in two systems:
System 1: Fast, automatic, and intuitive thinking that relies on heuristics and mental shortcuts to make quick judgments.
System 2: Slower, more deliberate, and analytical thinking that requires effort and is used to evaluate complex situations more deeply.
Kahneman didn’t describe our System 1 stereotypes as something to overcome, but underscored the importance of being deliberate about using System 2 thinking to counteract the biases of System 1. The application for urbanists would be to slow down to critically examine assumptions about apartments, mass transit, road diets, the role of beauty in public spaces, or whatever else. Question whether your deeply held belief has been shaped more by cognitive shortcuts (stereotypes) than by evidence.
You won’t change human nature, but you can be more aware of the psychology of judgment.
Do you believe a neighborhood is incomplete without commercial land uses? Why or why not?
Do you assume that the need for traffic enforcement is a sign of poor street design? Why or why not?
Do you believe individual property rights are more important than the majority opinion of a community’s residents? Why or why not?
Apply some System 2 thinking to your System 1 stereotypes and you’ll be less likely to be dogmatic. It’s similar to when you first become a parent. A whole bunch of things you swore you were absolutes get tossed out the window. Even more so when the second child comes along.
Our brains rely on shortcuts to draw conclusions—shortcuts shaped by stereotypes and reinforced by the faith ladder. That’s human nature, and it often leads to good judgments. But not always.
Exactly what I needed to read today before heading into a City Council goal-setting retreat with some newly elected officials who may be guided more by System 1 beliefs than by System 2 analysis. Glad I could find my copy of Kahneman’s book on my shelf.
Finally, a rational argument about how we ended up so polarised and ideological in sweating some of the ‘small beer’ issues in urban transport and land-use planning.