Following that Ch. 17 conversation, we have Murray’s theory of misinformation:
“The family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation. There must be something in family life that generates factual error. Over-closeness, the noise and heat of being. Perhaps something even deeper, like the need to survive. Murray says we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world of hostile facts. Facts threaten our happiness and security. The deeper we delve into the nature of things, the looser our structure may seem to become. The family process works toward sealing off the world. Small errors grow heads, fictions proliferate” (81-82).
No framing necessary here, either.
The phenomena Murray is referencing may be an artifact of group cognition. Group cognition being the delegation of thought among members of a group, in this case the most basic organization structure for mankind, a family. The theory suggests that thought is divided among members of the group in a manner to maximize the capability and knowledge of the group beyond the sum of its individual members’ capabilities. Here the theory may be extended into memory, where each member of the group is tasked with storing different types of knowledge.
ReplyDeleteConsider a few basic family member stereo types. Mother remembers important dates like anniversaries and birthdays and where objects (keys, etc) were last located, Father is tasked with knowing how to do odd maintenance jobs around the home and known the schedule for performing such jobs, and children are tasked with retaining academic knowledge (things the parents knew but are forgetting, like how many oceans and continents exist and how to spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious).
If group cognition is correct and extends to memory, each member may become an “expert” at retaining information in a given subject. As the group recognizes a given member as an expert in a given area that persons statements will be questioned less and more readily accepted as fact. This may lead to the factual dissonance Murray is describing. Murray exists as an outside observer, peering into the family unit and as a result he does not accept a given member’s statement as fact without evidence or prior knowledge. So for example one of the children may say that water begins to boil at 214°F and the other members of the family may accept that for two reasons, it sounds correct (they may know it’s more than 200°F and less than 300°F) and that child is the expert in the area of scientific knowledge, but Murray, not being a member of this cognitive group, will reject the child’s information as incorrect.
Factual error in this situation can stem from several places. Perhaps the expert in that area has forgotten the knowledge or is misremembering it. If that member is unable to produce the knowledge requested other members of the group may put forward suggestions that they believe are correct and once the group reaches a level of consensus something incorrect may be taken as fact. In such an episode a conflict has arisen that will create a memory for the group further solidifying that fact.
tl;dr Murray is describing group think and it doesn’t work so well.