Laziness and pride

Laziness plays a role in encouraging us to conform and to kowtow to authority. Combined with the common desire
for quick results and simplicity, laziness also leads to the tendency to think in terms of stereotypes and slogans. A
stereotype (e.g., “the woman driver,” “the redneck,” “the teenager,” “the liberal”) is a classification, and a slogan is
a generalization (“Love it or leave it;” “Make love not war,” “Skepticism is a virtue”) or an oversimplification
(“Darwin’s theory is that we all come from monkeys;” “Freud said everything is sex,” “Atheists believe life is
meaningless”) based not on evidence but on prejudice or unexamined beliefs. Gordon Allport called stereotyping
“the principle of least effort” (1954: 173). Thouless calls it “tabloid thinking” (1950: 91-101).
Pride, too, plays a part in hindering us from thinking critically. Most of us want to appear knowledgeable and
right, rather than ignorant or wrong, so we don’t object to or challenge claims made by others, especially
authorities. We pretend we understand things for fear of appearing foolish. Or we let false or stupid remarks go by
without saying anything because we don’t want to cause a scene.