Social Groups rather than Facts Shape our Opinions

Our attitudes are shaped much more by our social groups than they are by facts on the ground. We are not great reasoners. Most people don't like to think at all, or like to think as little as possible. And by most, I mean roughly 70 percent of the population. Even the rest seem to devote a lot of their resources to justifying beliefs that they want to hold, as opposed to forming credible beliefs based only on fact. 

Think about if you were to utter a fact that contradicted the opinions of the majority of those in your social group. You pay a price for that. 

I live in a very limited universe, and so I have to depend on the beliefs and knowledge of other people. I know what I’ve read; I know what I’ve heard from experts. In that sense, the decisions we make, the attitudes we form, the judgments we make, depend very much on what other people are thinking. 

Steven Sloman quoted in Vox

Wait! You Didn’t Use the Proper Lingo

Once introduced, a prescriptive rule about terminology in a particular profession or field of study is hard to eradicate, no matter how ridiculous. Steven Pinker writes in The Language Instinct:

The rules survive by the same dynamic that perpetuates ritual genital mutilations and college fraternity hazing: I had to go through it and am none the worse, so why should you have it any easier? Anyone daring to overturn a rule by example must always worry that readers will think he or she is ignorant of the rule, rather than challenging it. Since perspective rules are so psychologically unnatural that only those with access to the right schooling can abide by them, they serve as shibboleths, differentiating the elite from the rabble.