When Should We Leave Our Beliefs Behind?: Dylan Blaum

Dylan Blaum

Psychology graduate student Dylan Blaum has arguments on his mind.

But not in the way that most people think of when they hear the word ‘argument’. For example, he doesn’t imagine people yelling at each other about whether Justin Bieber is still cool.

Instead, Blaum thinks about arguments in much the same way that Monty Python had defined them in their “argument clinic” sketch so many years ago, namely as “a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.”

Granted, the sketch was much funnier than the definition.

However, the premise of the sketch is true: many people are not skilled in evaluating arguments and they need an argument clinic to help them to do so.

Consequently, Blaum spends his days thinking and researching how people evaluate arguments and the ways that educators can help others learn this skill.

“Evaluating arguments takes effort, knowledge and reasoning. Unfortunately, many people may not use these mental tools” explained Blaum. “In order to evaluate arguments, you need to establish whether the reason or reasons are true, and if they are, whether they support the conclusion or claim. Importantly, one should put their own personal beliefs aside and let the argument speak for itself. Otherwise, people will only believe things that they think are already true. They fall into ‘belief traps’.”

As an example, Blaum cites the website Reddit which contains a number of forums in which people share their beliefs and interpretations about topics and facts.

“People get stuck in their echo chamber when they converse with other like-minded individuals. Even when presented with facts and fairly good arguments that are inconsistent with their beliefs, people will do mental gymnastics to make them fit with theirs” explained Blaum. “People typically scrutinize an argument only when it goes against their beliefs. When it is consistent with their beliefs, they tend not to, even if the argument is poor.”

Failure to correctly evaluate arguments may lead people to believe any number of false or questionable ideas, like governmental conspiracies and cover-ups. At the extreme, such beliefs can lead to deadly consequences like the nation experienced in Charlotte and Pittsburgh over the past few years.

Blaum won the COSSA (CISLL’s Outstanding Student Scholar Award) for 2018-2019 based on his research on argumentation that he has conducted with his graduate advisor Dr. Anne Britt, and for his dissertation in which he is currently working on.

In his dissertation, he plans on giving flawed and unflawed arguments to students to rate on strength and quality. An example flawed argument would be “Marijuana should be legalized because it is a plant that grows naturally” whereas an unflawed argument would be “Marijuana should be legalized because it is less harmful than other already legal drugs.”

Having participants distinguish between flawed and unflawed arguments is called the flawed judgement task.

“Much prior research had people rate arguments on their strength, but the researchers in these studies appeared not to have clearly defined for their participants what ‘strength’ meant. So, for one half of my participants, I will tell them to evaluate whether the reason provides support for the claim. This will essentially give them a vital ingredient of what a good argument entails. For the other half, I will just have them rate them on strength without giving them a clear definition.”

Blaum hypotheses that by giving them a clear definition people will show an improvement on the flawed argument task because it gives them a mental schema of what an argument is.

Blaum is also testing the role of prior beliefs on argument evaluation.

“There is research which indicates that when people already believe in the general spirit of the argument, they do not see the flaws in the argument” Blaum explained. “This can lead to individuals furthering their beliefs without considering credible evidence to the contrary,” and possibly those deadly consequences mentioned earlier.

That is, for a person who already believes that marijuana should be legalized, the idea that marijuana is a naturally occurring plant is a good enough reason to believe that it should be. They think the argument is sound despite the fact that many naturally occurring plants are harmful if ingested, and the government does not knowingly legalize harmful actions.

“It will be interesting to see if their prior beliefs trump the potential positive impact of telling them what constitutes a good argument” mused Blaum. “if they do, then prior beliefs may reign supreme over reasoning.”

The findings from his dissertation may point towards ways in which citizens around the globe can be better judges of what they read and hear.

“It may not be like Monty Python’s argument clinic but people need to be more aware of why they hold certain beliefs. Getting them to understand the nature of arguments is a good beginning” added Blaum.