The mainstream political left demonstrates a particular form of antisemitism. It is not overt hostility, but something harder to identify: motivated reasoning, a preconscious worldview that governs what a person finds credible, what requires proof, and onto whom the worst conclusions fall.

Here is how it works. When people evaluate a proposition they are primed to believe, they ask “can I believe this?” – a permissive standard requiring only confirmatory evidence. When they evaluate a proposition they are primed to reject, they ask “must I believe this?” – a far more demanding standard requiring that the claim survive a search for disconfirmation. Gilovich identified this asymmetry, and it has become a standard framework in the medical conflict-of-interest literature for explaining how physicians unconsciously favor conclusions they are primed to believe (1). Cain and Detsky put it plainly: everyone is biased, and the most dangerous bias is the kind its holder is certain they do not have (2). Tversky and Kahneman demonstrated that a random number can shift how people estimate facts (3). Given that empirical observation, consider how targeted, agenda-driven information can impact a person already primed to believe it.

That priming, applied to Jews, is what antisemitism on the political left often looks like. Not slurs, but a framework about what is believable and who has to prove it.

Nicholas Kristof’s recent column on........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)