We think we know what’s up.
Maybe not in those exact terms, but we all think this about ourselves on some level—that we know how the world is and, importantly, that: We. Are. Right. That’s not necessarily a problem in and of itself. Confidence and standing up for what you believe in ain’t so bad right? What is a problem is when people who think they know the world butt up against people who think they know the world just a bit differently, both of whom equally convinced they’re right (if even by just a tad more). In fact that’s basically the essence of “social conflict.” So, let’s take a look at what social psychology has come up with to shed some light on what’s going on here.
Social psychologists use the term naïve realism (Keltner & Robinson, 1996) to describe a trifecta of assumptions and perceptions that people commonly have of the world:
1: People assume their own view of the world is objective, (“what I see and experience of the world is how reality really is”)
2: People assume others operate within the same ‘objective’ reality, (“other people experience the same reality I experience”)
3: People assume that judgments that deviate from their own must be due to outside biases, (“if they are operating within the same reality as I am, but have different conclusions, they must be unduly influenced”)
We experience the world exclusively from our own perspective, so it’s really hard for us to imagine that something obvious in our view might not be in someone else’s. Add on to that, we tend to take our own judgments more seriously than we do others’ (Pronin, Gilovich, & Ross, 2004). David Foster Wallace (2005) vividly describes this collective phenomenon in real terms:
Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence… Think about it: There is no experience you’ve had that you were not at the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is right there in front of you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your monitor, or whatever. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real-you get the idea.
With this salient and personally undeniable view of ‘how stuff works’ — whether it be how you think businesses should be run (companies = people?), what is or is not a proper sport (I’m looking at you golf), or to any number of things from the mundane to the serious — it makes sense that we naturally assume others are taking in the world similarly to how we do. In other words, we assume that we are all working with the same data and evidence of the world around us. We can explain away people who disagree with our assessment of the world as those who are less intelligent (“they just can’t put the pieces together”) or don’t have all the facts or the right angle (“if they only knew what I knew, then they would agree with me”). Not only that, but we also tend to assume that others with opposing views to our own are more opposing than they really are (‘not only do they disagree with me, but they really disagree with me’; Robinson, Keltner, Ward, & Ross, 1995). Put together, naïve realism plays an important role in why we don’t agree with each other and why conflict can easily become so visceral.
Naive realism is the key to figuring out how to overcome social conflict. Because, surprise surprise, we don’t all view the world the same way (no duh, Sherlock). That may seem glaringly obvious. But when I say that we view the world different from one another I also mean it in far more fundamental terms. Take color–people even view something as seemingly objective as color differently based off language and cultural upbringing (e.g. Greeks see shades of blue that English speakers can’t distiguish; Madden, Hewett, & Roth, 2000; Thierry, Athanasopoulos, Wigget, Dering, & Kuipers, 2009). Understanding the place of naïve realism in your own perceptions goes a long way to resolving conflict in opposing parties. Actually, those with the most extreme points of view can actually be the best at A) identifying their own biases and B) staying open to the opposing parties’ perspective. And just to drive the point home, the psychologists who found that weren’t joking around—they were studying the Israeli/Palestinian conflict! (Nasie, Bar-Tal, Pliskin, Nahhas, & Halperin, 2014).
Conflict resolution is difficult, that’s not front-page news. We all know that. Even the field of psychology itself has grappled with naïve realism (Michell, 2003) and the conflicts therein. But staying aware of how you view the world, and how you think others are compared to you, can go a long way to resolving conflict before it even happens.
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References
Keltner, D., Robinson, R.J. (1996). Extremism, Power, and the Imagined Basis of Social Conflict. Current directions in psychological science, 5(4), 101-105. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.ep11452765
Madden, T.J., Hewett, K., & Roth, M. S. (2000). Managing Images in Different Cultures: A Cross-National Study of Color Meanings and Preferences. Journal of International Marketing, 8(4), 90-107.
Michell, J. (2003). The quantitative imperative: positivism, naive realism and the place of qualitative methods in psychology. Theory and Psychology, 13(1), 5-31. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354303013001758
Nasie, M., Bar-Tal, D., Pliskin, R., Nahhas, E., Halperin, E. (2014). Overcoming the Barrier of Narrative Adherence in Conflicts Through Awareness of the Psychological Bias of Naïve Realism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(11), 1543-1556. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167214551153
Pronin, E., Gilovich, T., & Ross, L. (2004). Objectivity in the Eye of the Beholder: Divergent Perceptions of Bias in Self Versus Others. Psychological Review, 111(3), 781-799. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.111.3.781
Robinson, R.J., Keltner, D., Ward, A., Ross, L. (1995). Actual versus assumed differences in construal: “Naive realism” in intergroup perception and conflict. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(3), 404-417. Retrieved from http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/1995-25009-001
Thomas J. Madden, Kelly Hewett, Martin S. Roth (2000) Managing Images in Different Cultures: A Cross-National Study of Color Meanings and Preferences. Journal of International Marketing: Winter 2000, 8(4), 90-107. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1509/jimk.8.4.90.19795
Thierry, G., Athanasopoulos, P., Wiggett, A., Dering, B., Kuipers, J. (2009). Unconscious effects of language-specific terminology on preattentive color perception. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(11), 4567-4570. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0811155106
This is Water (2005). Retrieved from http://bulletin-archive.kenyon.edu/x4280.html
