When the result suits us, the last five seconds are enough

About two weeks ago, during the quarter-final match between Argentina and Egypt, Egyptian fans saw a simple thing: their team went on the attack, the ball reached the net, and suddenly a legal goal was disallowed for a dubious reason. Argentina fans saw a completely different move. From their perspective, the attack began with a foul committed by an Egyptian player at the start of the move, and therefore everything that followed was flawed at its core. The goal seemed legal when examining the end of the move, but became illegal the moment the referee examined the entire move via VAR. The same game, the same move, the same images. One side sees a simple and clear event, and the other side sees a move that needs to be broken down into components.

This is not a new phenomenon. Already in 1954, a classic study showed that students from two universities watched the same video of a football game and saw two different games. Fans of each side pointed out almost twice as many fouls for the opposing team. Fans are not neutral observers. Each side does not just reach a different conclusion: it chooses, without feeling it, how much of reality needs to be taken into account. When the immediate result suits us, the last five seconds are enough. When it hurts us, it turns out that we must go back, check the context, and analyze the sequence of events. This is how we argue outside the field as well.

Outside the field, Gadi Eisenkot caused a stir this week after mentioning Yousef Haddad and Mansour Abbas in the same sentence. Haddad reacted with anger and claimed that the comparison between them is based in fact only on them being Arabs, even though they have very different views, public identity, and attitude toward the state. And Yousef Haddad is right. He and Mansour Abbas are not comparable just because they are both Arabs. Placing them together erases exactly the differences that Eisenkot sought, apparently, to demand others to see. It is impossible to oppose the generalization of Arabs as a monolith, and then place two people in the same slot because of their origin.

But on a principled level, Eisenkot touched on a real problem. The right-wing campaign does not disqualify extremists, terror supporters, or certain parties. They use "Arabs" again and again as an invalid political category: "a government with the Arabs," "the Arab votes," "dependence on the Arabs." At the same time, it sanctifies a certain Arab person, as long as his positions match the camp. And that is exactly the point about complexity: two things can be true at the same time. Eisenkot pointed to a real problem and illustrated it with a failed comparison. Those who demanded not to flatten the differences between Haddad and Abbas were right. But the criticism does not negate the right-wing camp's attitude toward "Arabs" as a group.

However, our political discourse does not remain in this place. Complexity does not provide the emotional goods we need. It does not allow one side to win and the other to lose. Therefore, within a short time, two flat versions remained: according to one, Eisenkot is a racist who is unable to distinguish between two Arabs; according to the other, he courageously exposed the racism of the right. Once we have chosen a version, we focus on information that supports what we think and ignore information that contradicts it. This is called confirmation bias, but the mechanism is deeper. Studies show that we not only choose which facts to see. We also choose how to interpret them. A convenient conclusion is accepted almost without checking; a conclusion that threatens us turns us into a detective. Skepticism is not a principle. It is a resource that we waste mostly only on the other side.

Complexity as evasion

When a person from the other camp says something problematic, the case is simple. He said what he said, and the words testify to who he is. There is no need to check what he meant, what the context was, whether he phrased it poorly, or if there is an unjustified leap in our interpretation. Complexity, in this case, is perceived as evasion. The problem is not that we have lost the ability to think in a complex way. On the contrary: most of us are capable of being incredibly complex when complexity protects what is dear to us. We simply distribute it unequally — we grant it to our side and demand simplicity from the other side.

When a person from our camp says something similar, suddenly words are not enough. One must know the background, understand the intent, distinguish between the principle and the example, and take into account the totality of his work. Simplification, in this case, is perceived as unfairness. Thomas Pettigrew called this the "ultimate attribution error." We have circumstances; they have character. We have mistakes; they have a pattern. We have complex intentions; they have dark motives. And when we contradict ourselves, it is reality that is not simple. When they contradict themselves, it is hypocrisy.

This division is convenient because complexity requires holding two possibilities in the head, suspending judgment, and risking that the opponent is not absolute evil or that we are not completely right. In an era of polarization, this is not just an intellectual effort. It is a threat to identity. And the camp provides us with what the brain seeks more than it seeks accuracy: a coherent story. We are the decent, level-headed, and realistic people; they are the dangerous, blind, or evil people. Complexity threatens to spoil the story. Therefore, we complicate reality when the facts threaten our side, and simplify it when they threaten the other side. And the more we do this, the flatter the other side becomes.

The test for critical thinking is not whether we know how to identify the opponent's simplification. In that, we excel. The test is whether we are capable of noticing the moment when we ourselves decide that the last five seconds are enough, just because continuing the replay might complicate the picture. Not every complex position is correct, and not in every argument is the truth in the middle. Sometimes one side is truly wrong. But to know this, one must first apply to it the same level of complexity that we grant ourselves. Because complexity does not belong to the right or the left, and it is not a prize awarded only to those who are worthy of understanding in our eyes. It is a basic condition for the attempt to see human beings and reality as they are — and not as our camp needs them to be.

The author is an expert in behavioral economics and decision-making, a faculty member at the Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology at Reichman University.