Cognitive Bias of Moral Panics; the Human Proclivity for Behavioural Repetitivity.
It's Christmas eve 2020, a year many will say has been one of the toughest of their lives. I'm doom scrolling on twitter as usual, just like everyone else, and I come across a tweet that reminds me that even at Christmas some people just cannot let go of negativity and chose to share joy instead, not even just for a short time at Christmas in one of the hardest years of our collective lives.
There has been a number of things we can talk about in regard to this, whether it's finding fault with a rainbow tree bauble believing it to be the secret gay agenda being broadcast through the rainbows.
(put your tin foil hats on folks, it's cold and scary outside where the rainbows are, they'll get your mind and turn it into alphabettie spaghetti 'wokeratie' soup! Stay sharp straights!)
...or whether it's telling the LGBTQIA+ community they should 'accept themselves' and not take any medication(I won't go into the overt ableism, or attack on bodily autonomy of this kind of discourse as that would entail a whole new blog piece )
...the gender critical 'feminists' seem to find Christmas cheer a difficult thing to grasp.
However, what I want to talk about is the fact that on the 21st of December 2020 The Scottish National newspaer had published a bunch of readers' letters, and let's just say, the Christmas spirit seems to have been lost in translation.
The focus is, naturally, on the fact that Andy Wightman spectacularly resigned (tho not really?) from the Green Party, because they told him he couldn't vote for something they deemed as bigoted. Andy has come out swinging with a powerful exposé on how the cisgender, heterosexual, old, white, men are the true victims of the whole trans and non binary hate campaign; alongside the billionares who write wizard books and who are continually silenced in regular newspaper columns dedicated to how badly they have it.
I want to focus on one letter in particular written in support of Andy, the letter written by Isobel Lindsay - Sociologist and Vice-Chair of Scottish CND.
(Now, I will start off by saying here and now, I am not a sociologist.
Sociology is not my field; my degree is in fact in Archaeology, and I went to uni as a mature student at the age of 35, so my formal education is not a lengthy one by any means and I speak from no authority on sociology.
Everything here is simply my own understanding and interpretation of sociological and psychological theory and application in real-world situations)
"When the character of a man is not clear, look to his friends"
So, to the letter...
The letter in question begins with the writer stating they have the privilege of choosing not to engage, moving on quickly to declaring a marginalised group of people as a "very marginal issue" - which I have to say, for a sociologist does seem an extraordinary take, as marginalisation is caused literally by declaring a community a "marginal issue" so dismissing their concerns and perpetuating, if not creating, their marginalisation, but I digress...
It continues, sadly, in the same tone that every other gender critical 'debate' goes, stating how the whole of the LGBTQIA+ community and allies are simply "aggressive" witch hunters and that declaring solidarity for the old, cishet, white man to be the true solidarity of the moment. As if this is news to those of us in the LGBTQIA+ community *shrugs*.
However, the most horrifying parts of this letter are the last 2 paragraphs where Isobel conflates trans kids being given the opportunity to address their gender early on in life, to that of a group of child abusers she had heard of in the 1970s who wanted to legalise childhood sexual abuse (CSA).
This is, sadly, not a rare conflation from gender critical 'feminists': they often accuse trans and non-binary people of being predators who want to attack both children and women.
Let's be honest here, this letter would not look out of place in the letter section of the newspapers of the 70s and 80s homophobic moral panic!
I think these letters all speak for themselves, don't you?
On to the topic then
Moral panics and Cognitive Bias
I very briefly mentioned cognitive bias in my piece in Ungagged but as I state this is an extremely long and complex subject, so this blog piece will be, well, extremely long.
So, what is a moral panic?
Moral panic is when society begins to fear a group of people - often margianlised - for one reason or another, gasoline is added as fuel to the fire by mass media with headline after headline of all the horrifying ways this group of people are going to destroy our way of life as we know it! Soon enough, we are finding politicians become involved and begin legislating against these people's mere existence.
Moral panic is a social contagion of the worst kind, because it truly harms individuals, groups and our society as a whole.
There are some very helpful short videos and I will link a few here so you can choose which particular style of explanation fits best for you.
I have regularly asked myself each time a moral panic occurs, why are some of the world's most educated, intelligent people so susceptible to such blatant and overused emotional manipulations? Why does this continue to happen, over and over, throughout human social history?
I believe the answer can be found in - irony of ironies - sociology and psychology.
The answer, I believe, is human cognitive bias.
Cognitive bias is one of my favourite, and yet most hated, psychological theories, because it is one of my favourite and yet most hated human behavioural traits.
Briefly, what is cognitive bias?
In my layman's understanding, cognitive biases are a system our brain has set up to order and understand the world around us, making a complex and confusing world more digestible to our brain.
This is actually a good thing, it makes living in this world a lot easier by simplifying things so we can manage them, the problem is, our biases can simplify things too much, and we can use them as a replacement for rational thinking and logical deduction.
This creates a system of what is known as 'heuristics' and this leads us to making decisions based on the flawed and incomplete information our biases have fed to our brain.
Moral Panic; the Emotional Stages
Each moral panic has been created or exacerbated by the inevitably of progressive change brought by the younger generation, or by a seemingly 'new' group 'introduced' into a society.
This change brings with it the older, less progressive, generations' fears about their world changing around them. This is stage one.
This is somewhat understandable, none of us want our world to change, it can be scary and we don't understand how to traverse this new one, but, change is a natural way of life, in both our bodies and our societies.
Stage two is when this older generation tell themselves, this time it's 'different'. They tell themselves that *they* are not like the previous older genarations who once stood in the way of their progressive ideals and desire for a better society.
This is what cognitive bias does.
It fools us into believing that even though every single word and behaviour is literally verbatim what the older regressive generation once said to us, about us, *we* are different.
People have to believe that they are not the 'bad guys' in this scenario. Because if they were, it would put into question everything they knew about themselves. And that is a hella scary concept, to think that maybe, you're not quite the person you thought you were.
This is where we face cognitive dissonance - which what I always feel as a stubborn brick wall of pride.
Cognitive dissonance, very briefly, is that discomfort we feel when faced with contradictory in formation, and more often than not, it pushes us to dismiss and ignore any information which causes it.
Without cognitive bias, and the cognitive dissonance we experience when faced with contradicting information we would be able to objectively and critically consider what our thoughts are telling us, and in the case of a moral panic any person would rationally and logically have to come to the conclusion that the rest of us have; that they are not 'different' to the older generation they once fought against for progress, they now are that generation.
But, because of cognitive biases and the clear cognitive dissonance that this would cause telling them this, the real world and the rest of us in it, know what it looks like when bias is doing your thinking for you.
Now, I'm not going to get into this too deeply, I have already said this is not my forte, and I have mostly forgotten everything I learned in my 2 years of studying psychology - thank you executive dysfunction -; suffice it to say, if we are using our biases to create the world around us, that world is not going to be the truest representation of itself. And if we are dismissing contradictory information because it's too uncomfortable for us, we are unlikely to learn new things, or be willing to learn new things.
Basically, using our cognitive biases to understand the world will inevitably lead to misunderstanding it.
Moral Panic and Transphobia
So, how else does this link into current transphobia and moral panics?
I have mentioned @implausiblegrrl many times in my various writing, I really respect the effort put into research and I have to say, the thread she created is one of the best I've ever seen in terms of putting together all the comparisons between historic homophobia and contemporary transphobia. So I have linked and highly recommend reading and following.
The comparisons between historic homophobia during the moral panic of the 70s and 80s around gays and lesbians and contemporary transphobia are stark; as we have seen with the above letters. The arguments are verbatim the same, the headlines are verbatim the same.
The current transphobic moral panic is a regurgitation of the homophobic moral panic. There is no denying this evidence, whatever peoples cognitive biases tell them is true.
These are just a few examples of moral panics I found online: against immigrants, against trans people, against gay people
Stage three, repetition Isn't it really something just how similar they all are? In tone, in content, in context. There is an overt pattern there, the same messages repeated over and over. And repetition is a good way for our brains to take information in - anyone who has ever done an exam can tell you that!
There are analogies to child abusers and predators, and accusations of sexualizing kids, seducing kids, ruining women's sports, erasing heterosexuality; if you look at it from a sociological and psychological perspective, it's really quite fascinating just how predictable and repetitive the 'arguments' actually are. And truly mindboggling how cognitive dissonance will stop any person from actually challenging themselves on using these repetitive 'arguments'.
How a moral panic appears to the public may well seem unique and new at the time *they* experience it, but the pattern is there - if you want to see it.
And yet, despite this glaring pattern, most people appear to 'forget' even things that are in their own living memory, things they have spent their entire lives and careers learning about, simply because their own cognitive bias needs them to.
Stage four PANIC!! FEAR!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES
F E A R!!! is the key to any good moral panic.
You must be in fear at all times; of immigrants and foreigners, you must be in fear of them stealing your jobs, your women, your benefits, your safety, your kids safety and fear for your whole way of life being stripped before your very eyes. Our emotions must always be switched on, we must be alert and aware! You must be in fear at all times of the gays the lesbians and the trans!
Actually, the entire LGBTQIA+ community are out to take your straight, cisgender, morally good society and turn it into a free for all, any gender you wish, any alphabet letter you prefer, the nuclear family will be destroyed AARRGGGHHH!!
A moral panic by its design will instill fear into easily manipulated people's minds, and their cognitive bias will do the rest.
Stage five This is where people begin to express their fears by taking to any and all forms of media
Stage six
Dehumanisation and complete lack of empathy and compassion is the last and most frightening stage of any moral panic (excluding physical violence as a stage here).
People are seen as and thought of as less than the person themselves, they are called "creature" and "it" they are seen as mentally ill and incapable of thought.
This part brings the worst out of any human being, with all kinds of abusive, and often sexually explicit, attacks towards people, whether of the group or an ally of the group.
What is worrying about all of this, is how much our society gives this kind of overt cruelty and hate any kind of legitimacy, and, in true to moral panic fashion, the politicians have become the best way to do so ; began pushing back progressive policies such as anti LGBTQIA+ bullying in schools, rejecting sex education in school curriculum , and the SNP effectively ending GRA reform despite it being in their manifesto, and the above example of the removal of advice for those working in womens only wards in the NHS.
Irony Alert!
It so happens, as I discovered from the endlessly educational twitter, that the writer of that particular letter Isobel Lindsay appears to be the mother of none other than Robin McAlpine - yes, that's the Common Weal Director.
And in yet another irony of ironies, only a few days before his own mother came out with a comparison worthy of the worst of the 70's homophobic moral panic, he had written an article in Source about feeling threatened by 'other' and how addictive this is.
The quote which stood out of this article for me was the following;
" it is human nature to look for threat, to feel challenged when were not agreed with, fear things that will be taken from us... nothing good has ever come from hearing an idea, hope, a feeling, a vision and first looking for how it might be an attack. Those awful stress hormones are sadly addictive and draw us further into our belief that the other is the problem in our life"
First of all, I completely agree with every word of this paragraph, this is, sadly, human nature to fear and other people, it's also, shockingly, as we have seen, the nature of every moral panic ever created, it's the very nature of every bigotry and every hate crime ever committed against a marginalised group of people targeted by a moral panic.
And yet, here we have all the ingredients for the recipe of a moral panic, every aspect, from attack to dehumanisation, and despite knowing how harmful it is to allow it, people continue to do it.
OOOOFTT
this was a long one eh! And not exactly one which feels like a good read has been had.
This is why I put it off for so long, nobody wants to have to read (or write) all of this.
Same as with many of yous, the way these people have been opearating has been taking a toll on me, searching through the endless streams of hate and abuse has not been an easy task.
so
TLDR
It's easy to see the pattern here, newspapers push the FEAR!!! The message becomes repeated over and over, ad nauseam via hyperbolic headline after hyperbolic headline, until it sticks in the mind to FEAR!! this certain group - which sadly happens quickly and easily.
The message is then 'acted on' by 'concerned' parties with extensive reach - wizard writers, journalists, politicans, etc and then the backslide into regressive social politics delves deeper into the madness that is moral panic mania.
And,. of course, there are the inevitable 'but *I* am the real victim here, why must *you* the margianlised person or group abuse *me* - said almost exclusively by privileged, wealthy, comfortable, safe, cisgender, hetrosexual, white people. There are the demands we 'debate agreeably' we bow down and beg for our attacker's forgiveness that we dared to question or challenge them.
There seems to be a mistaken belief that having knowledge is the same as understanding it.
I have seen some of the smartest people say and believe some of the most ridiculous things. And I can safely put equating trans people wanting support early on in their life with child abusers wanting to legalise abuse as one of those things. The letter written by Isobel Lindsay is a prime example of the effects of a moral panic on people's ability to think both critically and rationally when being bombarded with fear and hate. Even well-educated people.
The one thing any form of education should do is highlight that introspection and critical evaluation of your own ideas, your own values and your own biases is the most important part of it. it's not the knowledge, it's not the information you cram into your brain through reading and researching, that's all just noise at the end of the day. What you DO with it all is the crucial part of learning anything.
And the most important part of education as a whole is learning to unlearn all the biases your brain has fooled you into believing are truths. That is why we educate ourselves, not to be able to say * I know* but * I understand now what I didnt know*.
It, sadly, shows that even sociologists (and philosophers as many gender critical 'feminists' appear to be) can become not only manipualted by a moral panic, but become part of the problem during a time where harmful social contagions such as moral panics are occurring.
It's very easy to talk about not allowing fear to manipulate you and how it can become addictive, it's quite another thing to put this into practice in your own life.
Lastly, the current regurgitation of homophobic gay panic targeting the trans and non-binary community is a stain on Scottish politics and the Scottish left.
Moral panic is not new, it's well known and well studied, even I as a layman can grasp the simple concept that using fear of losing their way of life - and self - to manipulate people in society, via media, is a standard tactic and, frankly, overdone.
LGBTQIA+ rights are not up for debate, not because a moral panic says so, not because people's fear says so, and not ever.
I hope you all have a good Hogmanay and fantastic New Year, to my trans and non-binary kin, stay strong - you shouldn't have to, you don't deserve this - but just know, you have support, you are loved and cared for and will always be, don't let these fearmongers and bigots take any of that from you.
Love to you all
Jo
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