Biases

This is a very important thread. It cuts to the heart of something I have only recently begun to understand, and which has given me more peace of mind since I started understanding it, and behaving in a manner consistent with that realisation.

My discovery is that most people, not just Nigerians, have a form of groupthink, which causes the bandwagon effect, and it is all related to confirmation bias.

Let us start with confirmation bias, the unconscious act of referencing only those perspectives that reinforce pre-existing views, and also at the same time, ignore facts that counter those views.

If, for example, you have grown up thinking that all Igbo people like money and are crooks, you’ll unconsciously see, and amplify news that enhances such a view, despite evidence that shows that pretty much every human being likes money. You’ll also likely get offended, if someone points out to you that neither Oyenusi, Anini, Shina Rambo nor Ade Bendel were Igbo. That’s how confirmation bias works, and when you gather a lot of people who are working with confirmation bias together in one room, the next logical thing follows, and that is groupthink, which leads to the bandwagon effect.

You see, when a group of people are together, there is a tendency to try to maintain the balance of the group, and so without knowing, the members of the group may agree to something, even if it is not correct. That is groupthink. Now, to protect the group, they will attack someone who proposes an alternative that does not follow that groupthink, and you find that even the most reasonable of the members of that group will participate in this attack, physical or verbal, even if such an action goes against their nature. That is bandwagon effect, and that is what has been described by Batahre here. His American colleague hates Obama, and nothing that can be said or done will change that.

Thing is, bandwagon effect can lead to a lot of very unfortunate outcomes, especially in a country like Nigeria that is choked full of laws but with little ability to enforce them. For example, we have laws against incitement in both the Criminal Code and the Penal Code, but a man can threaten an entire group of people, and be called to the table of elders to receive a soft reprimand, letting others to make the decision to make their own threats. What this means of course, is that unlike Batahre’s colleague, the Nigerian threat maker, if he is so inclined, actually has the license to, at some point, visit harm on the object of his fantasy, such as during an election if he thinks they are going to vote against his candidate. And because nothing will happen, well, he will do it again, and others will watch and learn, and do their own, and still others will do their own, and so it goes, and so it goes…

We all have biases. How we act on them, but more importantly, what happens after some crazies act on those biases, is what determines the follow up. If, as happened unfortunately in New Zealand some weeks back, someone’s biases go over the top, it is the function of the state to bring that person to heel, to serve as a deterrent to others. If, as has happened in places that will remain unmentioned, people act out their biases, and nothing happens, others will take note, and so it goes, and so it goes…