HOW COGNITIVE HISTORY CAN CAUSE US TO MISPERCEIVE
CONTEMPORARY U.S. ACTIONS TOWARDS CANADA
By Floyd W. Rudmin
Psychology Dept., University of Tromso
Tromso, Norway N-9037
A B S T R A C T
As psychological phenomena, historical beliefs are components of self-identity, are powerful motivators, and are resistant to new information. Cognitive history is the interdisciplinary study of the psychology of historical beliefs, including mechanisms of misbelief suggested by Ichheiser's theories of social perception. The present study examines the Canadian avoidance of evidence of threatening actions by the United States. The method of study is to examine public reports of hostile behaviors by agencies of the U.S. government in order to show the regularity with which Canadians have dismissed such reports without seeking to confirm or disconfirm them. Various explanations for this blind-eye behavior are consistent with Bayes' Theorem of conditional probability. Numerous recent examples of evidently hostile behavior are cited to support the conclusion that the contemporary history of U.S.-Canadian relations is incomplete and maybe incorrect, to a degree unknown until cognitive mechanisms of misperception are understood enough to allow historical facts to be freely sought and evaluated.
Author Biography: Floyd Rudmin is a cross-cultural social psychologist now holding the professorship in social and community psychology at the University of Tromso in north Norway. He is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada, and author of the book, Bordering on Aggression (Hull: Voyageur, 1993).
I N T R O D U C T I O N
History is a very psychological discipline, and it is remarkable that there has been so little interdisciplinary collaboration between history and psychology (1). To be sure, historical explanations of the causes of past events usually include inferences about the motivations and the decision processes of the individuals involved. Two sub-fields of history --the "mentalitee" tradition of ethnohistory and recent studies in "social memory"-- both have psychological aspects (2). When psychological methods have been used more overtly and formally in history, the focus has been on explaining the psychological development of important individuals or groups of individuals. This is called "psychohistory" if inferences are based on Freudian interpretations and "historiometry" if inferences are based on statistical studies of multiple cases (3).
COGNITIVE HISTORY
But the role of psychology in history is not remote, not limited to far-away peoples or to dead personalities from the past. Historical beliefs are psychologically active in the heads of all of us who are alive today. Beliefs about history strongly influence our thinking and our behavior, especially political behavior. Thus, many governments find it important to control school history curriculums and textbooks. History is psychologically intimate to us. We identify ourselves by history. We possess and are possessed by history. When we say, "I am an American, a German, a Jew", we attach national histories to our personal biographies. The political slogan, "Je me souviens", inscribed on Quebec license plates means "I remember", referring to the 18th century conquest of New France by the English (4). This is a psychological claim that testifies to the intimacy of history with psychology and political action. It is predictable, perhaps self-evident, that national history and personal memory might become confused in our cognitive processes.
Because historical beliefs are bound to psychology, they are bound by psychology and thus relatively resistant to new information (5). To change an historical belief often requires that we must also change many other cognitions in our minds. It would be easier, for example, to consider and accept evidence that the moon has an atmosphere, than it would be for various readers to consider and accept evidence that only in 1879 were the Ryukyu Islands (Okinawa) first annexed to Japan (6), that in 1917 to 1920, Stalin supported Finland's independence from Russia (7), or that in 1934, the U.S. government authorized the immediate first-use of poison gas against Canadians in the event of war (8). Historical beliefs are powerful motivators and play a central role in our psychological readiness for war. All over the world, from Rwanda to Israel to Bosnia to Armenia, Chechnya, Iraq, India, Indonesia, endlessly, people will risk death and dare the destruction of their own communities in order to assert their historical beliefs (9). Yet, for all of this, historical beliefs have rarely been the focus of systematic study.
There is need for the development of a sub-field called "cognitive history", to be defined as the interdisciplinary study of the psychology of historical beliefs (10). Austrian psychologist, Fritz Heider, one of the founders of cognitive social psychology, was perhaps the first to suggest this:
"One should write history as a development of 'beliefs' (not in the narrow religious sense), as a description of the succession and changes in the world pictures, the world images. The changes in cognitive maps, the life spaces."(11)
The focus should be on the contents and the internal structure of historical beliefs and on their dynamics, meaning their acquisition, disposition, and interaction with motivations, emotions, and other beliefs and behaviors. As cognitive phenomena, beliefs are held by individuals, but often collectively within national groups, within ethnic and religious minorities, and within specialist communities such as historians. Thus, beliefs can be studied at both the individual and the group levels. Furthermore, cognitive history can be approached from a variety of disciplines, including history, psychology, political science, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, literature, and communication studies. The methodologies of these various disciplines are all reasonable approaches to understanding historical beliefs.
Beliefs, of course, are difficult to study since they are essentially private, internal, phenomena. Beliefs cannot be directly observed. They must be inferred from behaviors and self-reports, both written and oral. When our beliefs are widely shared, they are doubly difficult to observe since we tend to be unaware of our beliefs without some contrasting points of external reference. Historical beliefs stand out dramatically as beliefs, and thus potential misbeliefs, when neighboring societies endorse contrary histories, as with the well-known example of Canadian schools teaching that the United States lost the War of 1812 and U.S. schools teaching that the United States won. Historical beliefs also stand out dramatically when new information is systematically ignored or tabooed, indicating that there is incompatibility with established beliefs that are actively maintaining their priority within our unconscious system of cognitive organization.
http://uit.no/getfile.php?SiteId=89&PageId=1935&FileId=140
CONTEMPORARY U.S. ACTIONS TOWARDS CANADA
By Floyd W. Rudmin
Psychology Dept., University of Tromso
Tromso, Norway N-9037
A B S T R A C T
As psychological phenomena, historical beliefs are components of self-identity, are powerful motivators, and are resistant to new information. Cognitive history is the interdisciplinary study of the psychology of historical beliefs, including mechanisms of misbelief suggested by Ichheiser's theories of social perception. The present study examines the Canadian avoidance of evidence of threatening actions by the United States. The method of study is to examine public reports of hostile behaviors by agencies of the U.S. government in order to show the regularity with which Canadians have dismissed such reports without seeking to confirm or disconfirm them. Various explanations for this blind-eye behavior are consistent with Bayes' Theorem of conditional probability. Numerous recent examples of evidently hostile behavior are cited to support the conclusion that the contemporary history of U.S.-Canadian relations is incomplete and maybe incorrect, to a degree unknown until cognitive mechanisms of misperception are understood enough to allow historical facts to be freely sought and evaluated.
Author Biography: Floyd Rudmin is a cross-cultural social psychologist now holding the professorship in social and community psychology at the University of Tromso in north Norway. He is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada, and author of the book, Bordering on Aggression (Hull: Voyageur, 1993).
I N T R O D U C T I O N
History is a very psychological discipline, and it is remarkable that there has been so little interdisciplinary collaboration between history and psychology (1). To be sure, historical explanations of the causes of past events usually include inferences about the motivations and the decision processes of the individuals involved. Two sub-fields of history --the "mentalitee" tradition of ethnohistory and recent studies in "social memory"-- both have psychological aspects (2). When psychological methods have been used more overtly and formally in history, the focus has been on explaining the psychological development of important individuals or groups of individuals. This is called "psychohistory" if inferences are based on Freudian interpretations and "historiometry" if inferences are based on statistical studies of multiple cases (3).
COGNITIVE HISTORY
But the role of psychology in history is not remote, not limited to far-away peoples or to dead personalities from the past. Historical beliefs are psychologically active in the heads of all of us who are alive today. Beliefs about history strongly influence our thinking and our behavior, especially political behavior. Thus, many governments find it important to control school history curriculums and textbooks. History is psychologically intimate to us. We identify ourselves by history. We possess and are possessed by history. When we say, "I am an American, a German, a Jew", we attach national histories to our personal biographies. The political slogan, "Je me souviens", inscribed on Quebec license plates means "I remember", referring to the 18th century conquest of New France by the English (4). This is a psychological claim that testifies to the intimacy of history with psychology and political action. It is predictable, perhaps self-evident, that national history and personal memory might become confused in our cognitive processes.
Because historical beliefs are bound to psychology, they are bound by psychology and thus relatively resistant to new information (5). To change an historical belief often requires that we must also change many other cognitions in our minds. It would be easier, for example, to consider and accept evidence that the moon has an atmosphere, than it would be for various readers to consider and accept evidence that only in 1879 were the Ryukyu Islands (Okinawa) first annexed to Japan (6), that in 1917 to 1920, Stalin supported Finland's independence from Russia (7), or that in 1934, the U.S. government authorized the immediate first-use of poison gas against Canadians in the event of war (8). Historical beliefs are powerful motivators and play a central role in our psychological readiness for war. All over the world, from Rwanda to Israel to Bosnia to Armenia, Chechnya, Iraq, India, Indonesia, endlessly, people will risk death and dare the destruction of their own communities in order to assert their historical beliefs (9). Yet, for all of this, historical beliefs have rarely been the focus of systematic study.
There is need for the development of a sub-field called "cognitive history", to be defined as the interdisciplinary study of the psychology of historical beliefs (10). Austrian psychologist, Fritz Heider, one of the founders of cognitive social psychology, was perhaps the first to suggest this:
"One should write history as a development of 'beliefs' (not in the narrow religious sense), as a description of the succession and changes in the world pictures, the world images. The changes in cognitive maps, the life spaces."(11)
The focus should be on the contents and the internal structure of historical beliefs and on their dynamics, meaning their acquisition, disposition, and interaction with motivations, emotions, and other beliefs and behaviors. As cognitive phenomena, beliefs are held by individuals, but often collectively within national groups, within ethnic and religious minorities, and within specialist communities such as historians. Thus, beliefs can be studied at both the individual and the group levels. Furthermore, cognitive history can be approached from a variety of disciplines, including history, psychology, political science, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, literature, and communication studies. The methodologies of these various disciplines are all reasonable approaches to understanding historical beliefs.
Beliefs, of course, are difficult to study since they are essentially private, internal, phenomena. Beliefs cannot be directly observed. They must be inferred from behaviors and self-reports, both written and oral. When our beliefs are widely shared, they are doubly difficult to observe since we tend to be unaware of our beliefs without some contrasting points of external reference. Historical beliefs stand out dramatically as beliefs, and thus potential misbeliefs, when neighboring societies endorse contrary histories, as with the well-known example of Canadian schools teaching that the United States lost the War of 1812 and U.S. schools teaching that the United States won. Historical beliefs also stand out dramatically when new information is systematically ignored or tabooed, indicating that there is incompatibility with established beliefs that are actively maintaining their priority within our unconscious system of cognitive organization.
http://uit.no/getfile.php?SiteId=89&PageId=1935&FileId=140
