How does Tania Lombrozo say our drive to explain affects political polarization?

Tania Lombrozo says explanation can either fold new facts into existing beliefs or force a revision, and in politics it mostly does the first because political beliefs are tied to identity. People explain away inconvenient evidence, much as a scientist might blame a faulty microscope or a stereotype survives by labelling one person an exception. Her remedies are asking people to explain how a policy, such as a tax plan, works, and the strategy known as consider the opposite.

• Being assigned a side in a debate tends to make people believe the side they argued.
• Lombrozo says people rarely ask themselves how they might be wrong unless prompted.

▸In their words

“Overwhelmingly it ends up being a force that allows us to assimilate things in the context of what we already believe.” Tania Lombrozo · at 39:30 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on Hidden Brain (2026-10-26). Read the whole episode summary →

▸More from this episode