I have been writing this blog since Dec 1. It causes me a surprising amount of anxiety.
I started out feeling stress about putting my thoughts on
public display. Conversation is more nuanced than writing. One can soften the blow of one's opinions when in conversation. Writing down one’s thoughts subjects oneself to much more angry rebuttal. Interesting.
But, my anxiety is no longer about people disagreeing with me, it’s about readers
interpreting my thoughts in ways which I did not intend. Now my anxiety is more
around being seen to believe things which I simply do not. This blog has been a
great lesson in the difficulty we have communicating with one another. Justice,
politics, policing, journalism, etc. Contentious issues are really hard to
discuss because people with strong opinions tend to strong bias.
I try to write with precision. No doubt there is some
sloppiness in this area and my intended meaning is not perfectly clear. Still,
the propensity of readers to interpret this blog coloured by the lenses they
are wearing is rather remarkable. This is a form of observer bias. And, it has
me wondering about my own bias when I read opinion pieces in the Globe and Mail
or National Post.
In the U.S., the Innocence
Project reports eyewitness misidentification occurred in 75% of overturned
convictions in the United States of America. Eyewitnesses are fallible. The
context of the observer (or reader) obviously matters.
Studies have shown that witnesses of a mock crime who did
not witness the whole crime, nevertheless testified to what they expected would
have happened as though they had actually seen it. Our brains fill in details
that suit our expectations.
Confirmation bias is the tendency of the individual to
interpret evidence in a way that will confirm their own beliefs. Two
individuals with the same information may well have very different
interpretations and they will tend to perceive the information in a way which confirms
their pre-existing beliefs. I see this phenomenon repeatedly on this blog.
Context matters. Each reader brings his or her own context.
In 18 years as a broadcaster I received very few complaints.
I was not in the business of controversy and, consequently, I didn’t cause
much. Almost without exception any complaint I did receive was what I came to
call an “agenda driven complaint.” That is, a complaint about something that I
was alleged to have said which was offensive to the bias of the listener. In
most of these cases, the complainant had not even actually heard me. They had
been told by a friend, “You will not believe what Rambling Dave said,” and then
they called to complain. It was rarely something that I had actually said in
the first place. And, mostly I had the very same bias as the listener.
My favourite blog to read is by Ken Levine an Emmy winning
writer/director/producer/major league baseball announcer. Every Friday, Ken
answers questions from blog readers. This past Friday the following question
and answer appeared:
I just started a writing job (in a very different field than TV/ Movies) and am terrified every day that I'm a fraud. Did you ever feel this way and if so, how did you fake (and ultimately develop) your writing confidence? My sponsor says vodka is not an option.
Becky, here’s the dirty little secret – ALL writers are terrified that they’re frauds. And worse, they’ll be exposed for the frauds they are. So you’re in good company. You just have to suppress it.
In writing
this blog for five weeks I feel exactly as Ken describes. In part because I
worry about my writing and in part because I worry about its interpretation by
others.
I spend an hour a day on this. It is not as well written as
I would like it to be. I don’t have enough time for editing as I would like.
But, that is part of the exercise.
More interesting, to me, is how broadly interpreted my
thoughts are and how frequently I am taken to mean something which at
worst is completely the opposite of what I have written and, more commonly, is taken
to mean something which I did not intend.
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