What HK Blue Ribbons taught us about egocentric bias?
If you have followed the news, you’d know about the recent political turmoil in Hong Kong. For the time being, let us simply the population into two group: Blue Ribbons and Yellow Ribbons. Blue ribbons are the ones who support the police and/or the government. Yellow ribbons are the protestors who stand against the government, and more recently, the police brutality.
You may wonder how could anyone still show support to the Hong Kong police when there are live videos streaming their malicious beating against protestors and press, and their continuous firing of tear gas canisters and rubber bullets towards…just anyone. On Nov 11 and 12, they fired more than 2,000 tear gas canisters to the Chinese University. If you could just google CUHK, you’d have seen the horrific footages*.
Anyhow, one of the popular reasons amongst the Blue Ribbons is that the protestors are only going out because they receive money after each protest. The reward would go up if they escalate their violence as well. Here’s the price list*:
- Kill a police: HKD 50,000 (However, according to medias in China, this price has just skyrocketed to HKD 20,000,000)
- Stand in the front and lead the clash: HKD 8,000
- Wear black shirts (Dress code of anti-government protests) and cause any destruction: HKD 5,000
- Wear white shirts and cause any destruction: HKD 3,000
- Join protest: HKD 500
What they are trying to imply is the following:
Protestors are willing to destroy this beautiful city if the price is right. In fact, protestors are selfish and short-sighted beings who care only about their own benefits. The so-called values that they are trying to defend, i.e. freedom, justice, democracy, and truth are just excuses to cover up their selfish acts.
I’d like to point out that there were 1 million HK-ers joined the protests on Jun 9 and then another 2 million HK-ers on Jun 16. Based on the price list above, that’d cost about: HKD 1,500,000,000 (equivalent to ~USD 192M). Seriously, if this were true, I wonder where the money come from. But let’s not dwell into this piece of fake news that attempts to vilify the protestors. What I am trying to write about is the cognitive bias that would make this fake news believable, well, amongst the Blue camp at least.
Egocentric Bias.
What is egocentric bias? It is essentially the bias that causes people to undermine or disregard other people’s point of view simply because these perspective clashes with their own analysis, rather than based on facts, or any valid and sound arguments. Take a very simple, hypothetical example — you think that A causes C. Your friend thinks that B causes C. You are subjected to egocentric bias if you insist you are right only because this “A causes C” conclusion is your conclusion. You are so sure of it even though you do not have any concrete proof, or an internally consistent argument.
Here is a real life example —
Say you’ve farted in a meeting, and it was a pretty loud one. You felt really embarrassed and thought that people would make fun of you, or even think that you are a little unprofessional. But the reality is, people don’t really care if you’ve farted or not because that is a natural biological process — you are gassy, you can either burp or fart, and there is really little control to how the fart comes out. You are, however, too deep into your own thoughts and you come out of the meeting really upset and embarrassed for the rest of the week.
How is this applicable to the price list and the Blue Ribbons then? Blue Ribbons believe in this fake news because they believe money as the primary incentives that drives the Yellow Ribbons to come out and protest, even though the Yellow camp has made it very clear what they are after is something money cannot buy— freedom, democracy, justice, and truth. This is something that is very hard for the Blue camp to understand. Why would anyone be willing to suffer from the rain of tear gas canisters and rubber bullets over some abstract concepts and principles? Not to mention that they’d risk getting arrested, or worse, beaten up by cops (Now, it has escalated to being raped or killed by cops). Blue, being blinded by egocentric bias, cannot fathom such selflessness and therefore readily take in this piece of fake news. How ironic? Students and youngsters readily sacrifice themselves for the greater good of the society, and yet the Blue camp see it as an opportunity to make money, which is precisely the opposite of selflessness.
You know what’s interesting though? There are photos capturing the money when the Blue camp protestors receive money from an organiser after they’re done with the demonstrations that show support to the police and government.
I am not sure where you are viewing this from, but I think humanity, in particular our emotions and cognitive biases are pretty international. In Hong Kong, the society is so permanently divided that neither side has any hope in converting one another. Nonetheless, I’d like to point out that monetary incentive is indeed only one of the many forms of incentives. Think about what drives you behaviour and what you consider as a reward. Is it only money? Can it be your own happiness? Can it be the happiness of the people you care about? In the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs, there are five levels : Physiological needs, Safety Needs, Love and Belonging, Esteem, and Self Actualisation. Out of these five levels, seems to me that money is only essential for the first two. Yes, I’d need money to buy food and shelter, and sure, you can use money to somehow buy a companion but you cannot possibly buy care, love, or recognition from a person. You can buy new clothes, give yourself a new look so that you feel confident but you cannot buy inner strength, or what I refer to as resilience, no matter how much money you have. And, you definitely cannot buy the desire to groom yourself and bring out all your potential. But aren’t those things that would give us a sense of satisfaction and achievement? Wouldn’t those really make you happy? Henceforth, I’d say that money is not the only incentives there are, and people who put monetary rewards above everything else are in fact so low in the hierarchy of needs that I genuinely feel sorry for them.
Whoever is reading this, I wish that your society is not as dichotomised as the one in Hong Kong, and I wish that you can do a further reading and thinking of the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs so you can redefine incentives and motivations. That may help you shed some of the egocentric bias. After all, knowledge is power; it is the only thing that can break the shackles of ignorance and biases.
Source:
- CUHK under siege from the police.
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/11/12/cuhk-turns-battleground-protesters-police-clashes-rage-across-hong-kong-universities/ - The pro-police social media in Hong Kong listing out the price of different actions from protestors:
