Avoiding Bias in Evaluation

For most, unbiased evaluation of opposing views is particularly difficult. After all, no one wants to turn away from their life's work, or the legacy of their ancestors. The more that is sacrificed for a belief system, the less likely one is to abandon that belief system. The loss isn't all ideological, either. For example, suppose you were a General Authority.¹ Discovering truth that compromised your temple recommend status would mean not only great social stigma and familial troubles, but also a great financial loss. The best strategy, then, is to detach the search for truth from our temporal and philosophical circumstance.

In order to maintain objectivity, one must adopt an anthropological attitude.

The [anthropological] perspective allows one to be part of his own culture and, at the same time, be out of it. One views the activities of his own group as would an anthropologist, observing its tribal rituals, its fears, its conceits, its ethnocentrism. In this way, one is able to recognize when reality begins to drift too far away from the grasp of the tribe. (Postman and Weingartner, “Teaching as a Subversive Activity”, p. 17.)

The anthropological attitude helps one suspend their cultural and experiential bias in evaluating new perspectives. The ability to unplug from the network of one’s observations and conclusions is absolutely vital in order to logically consider alternative possibilities.

Once candidate truth has passed anthropological assessment, previously accumulated observations and conclusions must be folded back in to evaluate whether they still hold.