Bookworm: Wilful Blindness

Dr Margaret Heffernan urges us to stay vigilant to the dangers of wilful blindness – and explains how to do so.

What is this book about?

She borrows an analogy from neuroscientist Robert Burton which sums up the perils of naturally clustering together with likeminded people.

“Like water moving in a riverbed, the flow of ideas, experiences and information over time carves out a belief system in your neural pathways. Working with and living among like-minded people increases the flow, until the banks of the riverbed grow so high that they become blinders, obscuring other options and points of view.”

What’s so wrong with communities of likeminded people?

Heffernan argues that this kind of short-sightedness may lead us to overlook threats to our own security and to the wellbeing of our community.

For example, wilful blindness is a necessary ingredient in all kinds of abuses, neglects, crimes and evils. It is the reason why, when we love someone, we choose to ignore the ugliness of their road rage and assume that they’d never treat us that way.

It's also to blame for the global financial crash in 2008, when those dishing out mortgages to people who couldn’t afford the repayments chose not to listen to the voices of those who could see what was coming.

Couldn’t these errors be put down to complexity or differing viewpoints?

Not really. Even when the facts are there in black and white, we are completely capable of denying them.

To give another example: In the 1950s, epidemiologist Alice Stewart conducted research demonstrating a clear correlation between X-rays of pregnant women and incidences of leukaemia in their children.

So, obviously doctors stopped sending pregnant women for X-rays?

Nope. Doctors continued to X-ray pregnant mothers for another 25 years.

What? Why?

Wilful blindness. When Stewart first published her research, X-ray equipment was the medical community’s new toy and it had been heavily invested in. Even dedicated, intelligent doctors were loath to change, and instead chose to ignore Stewart’s research in order to protect an entrenched ideology.

Yikes. What’s going on in our minds when we let these things happen?

Our brains hate conflict and will do pretty much anything to avoid it. We have evolved many psychological strategies to save ourselves from discomfort which end up doing quite the opposite. Here are a few:

Confirmation bias: We look for examples to back up our existing assumptions, and we reject data that contradicts our beliefs.

Obedience: We absolve ourselves of responsibility for our actions if we can say we were told to act by a third party. This can have deadly consequences if we take our orders from a violent dictator, and it can make us an unethical professional if our boss cares more about profits than about people.

Conformity: We’d rather fit in than be right. The group we are in dictates how we respond to the world, to the extent that we’ll ignore a fire in a room if everyone else is ignoring it too. 

Is it possible to overcome these flawed cognitive strategies?

Staying vigilant to the dangers of wilful blindness is a full-time job, but doing so will likely help us to feel better connected to our community and the world at large – making atrocities, big and small, less likely to reoccur.

It might throw light on relationships at work and at home. It will probably make us better and more fulfilled people.

What practical things can I do?

We should look after ourselves and our minds. Tiredness makes us lazy and more likely to overlook important information or avoid difficult questions.

We must think of the information we feed our minds in the same way that we consider what food to feed our bodies. Embrace variety, seek out new viewpoints and don’t stop questioning yourself and those around you.

What am I most likely to say after reading this book?

“Silence is complicity.”

What am I least likely to say after reading this book?

“Don’t ask, don’t tell.”