Have you ever been in an argument where you’re so convinced that you’re right and the other person is so wrong that you could just erupt with frustration? (Sudden flashbacks to family dinners, anyone?).
But why can be people be so convinced about something despite not having all the facts?
Well, according to new study published in the journal PLoS ONE, people who have strong opinions about something may suffer from an “illusion of information adequacy.”
The research teamfound that people tend to assume that they have all of the information that they need to take a stance on a subject – even if they don’t have all the facts.
And we hate to break it to you, but there’s a good chance you could be suffering from it too.
“We found that, in general, people don’t stop to think whether there might be more information that would help them make a more informed decision,” study co-author Angus Fletcher said.
The study involved 1,261 Americans who were split into three groups – each of which had to read an article about a fictional school that lacked adequate water.
The team from Ohio State, Stanford University, and Johns Hopkins University allocated one group an article that only gave reasons why the school should merge with another that had adequate water. Meanwhile, the second group’s were given an article that only gave reasons against the merger.
Finally, the third group were given an article that had all the arguments for merging the schools and for keeping them separate.
The findings? Both groups that only had half the story still believed that they had enough information to make an informed decision. Not only that, they also expected others to have the same opinion as them.
In other words, they were experiencing the phenomenon that is the illusion of adequacy, which Fletcher describes as: “The less that our brain knows, the more confident it is that it knows all it needs to know. This makes us prone to thinking that we have all the crucial facts about a decision, leaping to confident conclusions and decisive judgments, when we are missing necessary information.”
However, Fletcher was most surprised by the finding that “people are willing to change their minds.”
Once every participant was given the other side of the argument, their opinions shifted towards the neutrality of the third control group who’d had all the information from the beginning of the study.
So what can we take from this in our day to day arguments?
Fletcher explains that one of the best ways to fight the illusion of information adequacy is to stop and ask yourself: “Is there something that I’m missing that would help me see their perspective and understand their position better?
“This can help eliminate unnecessary interpersonal conflict, allowing us to focus our energy on working through substantive differences between ourselves and others.”
Although this might not work on people who have deeply entrenched ideologies, Fletcher argues that “most interpersonal conflicts aren’t about ideology. They are just misunderstandings in the course of daily life.”
We can only hope that the other person WHO IS DEFINITELY WRONG OK asks themselves the same thing.