Introduction
Their social relations and thought patterns determine an individual’s actions. People may have biases and prejudices when making decisions in specific situations. For example, confirmation biases influence how people perceive, process, and recall information. For instance, people who favor or oppose a certain subject seek material to support their views and interpret news articles in a way that reinforces their preconceived notions. In “Salvation” by Langston Hughes, the effects of confirmation bias and sociocentric thinking are evident in the scenes related to the church, leading the main character to take undesirable actions.
Story Summary
Langston Hughes described a day in his boyhood when he attended church in “Salvation.” He finally became the last of the church’s children who had not been “saved” after all the others had been. “Langston jumped up, saying he had been saved, feeling pressed and worn out” (Hughes). Although he felt terrible for lying, the pressure from the entire church overwhelmed the regret.
Peer pressure is a feeling experienced by people of all types, comparable to Langston’s. Everyone, good and terrible, has fallen victim to peer pressure at some point. In Langston’s situation, he is a victim of peer pressure and regrets ever giving in to it.
Confirmation Bias in a Character’s Decisions
Moreover, the problematic aspect of that story is confirmation bias, which created the peer pressure he felt. Specifically, people’s innate tendency to notice, focus on, and give more weight to data that supports their preconceived notions is known as confirmation bias (Ruggiero). This bias can influence people’s judgments because it distorts the reality from which they get evidence. Under experimental conditions, people actively seek information and give greater weight to material that supports their existing views than to alternative ones.
The character in the narrative feels compelled to lie because he believes it to be the only course of action. He was a church member; therefore, he had to seem religious, which may be considered biased testimony. Compared with conclusions drawn from objective evidence, conclusions drawn from biased evidence are more likely to be incorrect. As a result, they are further removed from reality.
When considered as a whole, individual confirmation bias can have detrimental effects. If we are so deeply established in our convictions that we only accept information that supports them, then this may hinder wider sociopolitical collaboration, which sometimes requires considering competing perspectives. Significant societal disparities and ineffective policymaking may be caused by people’s predisposition to value information that confirms their beliefs above information that contradicts them (Ruggiero). When gathering and analyzing information, the main character took a cognitive shortcut, which was confirmation bias (Ruggiero).
This is because evaluating evidence requires time and effort; the brain seeks shortcuts to speed up the procedure, and “heuristics” are the name for these quick cuts. Whether confirmation bias qualifies as a heuristic in the formal sense is a matter of debate. However, one thing is sure: it is a cognitive technique people employ to seek data that most convincingly supports their hypotheses. The hypotheses that people already have are the easiest to find.
Sociocentric Thinking in a Character’s Perception of the Environment
Sociocentric thinking is another bias in Langston’s relationship with the church. As the main character continues to attend church at the age of thirteen, Langston Hughes paints a portrait of himself in which he contemplates man’s innate desire for obedience. A crowd that wants him to step up and accept salvation yields to pressure and approaches the altar as though they have seen the light of the Holy Spirit.
“Won’t you come? Won’t you come to Jesus? Young lambs, won’t you come?” (Hughes) Girls sobbing and children standing while the preacher stands there with extended arms indicate that they have physically felt the force of the Holy Spirit. Langston is there, feeling nothing but himself, waiting for an unidentified force to come and touch his inner soul, only to discover that the Holy Spirit is not even coming for him. The problem in the story is that Langston could not avoid socio-centric thinking.
Sociocentric thinking refers to the innate human propensity to view the world through a limited and biased group-centered lens, navigating the world using subjective and partial group beliefs, influences, rules, thoughts, and interests (Ruggiero).
The egocentric mind, or the innate propensity to view things from a limited, self-centered perspective, is closely related to socio-centric cognition, as individuals within groups create it. The world in which Langston lives is highly religious, and that is why his thinking is shaped by the community’s rules and values (Kinds of Thinking).
Socio-centric thinking assumes that people are focused on achieving collective goals rather than individual goals. Members of one team at work may be socio-centric thought representatives, as the socio-centric method of thinking assumes that a group of people will achieve some results. The group’s objectives are focused on the outcomes for the entire group.
Most people are unaware of how much they have naively ingrained the prevalent prejudices of their society or culture. Sociologists and anthropologists describe this as a condition of being “culture-bound.” Humans learn to internalize the customs and traditions of the groups to which they belong at a very young age. They start “fitting in” with groups without consent, but it is somewhat out of a survival instinct (Ruggiero).
People spend the majority of their lives as members of various groups due to an innate desire to be accepted and regarded by others, and to have their existence affirmed. The capacity to identify group activities that make sense to accept, those that need change, and those that should be categorically rejected is a skill that humans do not naturally acquire. Individuals, from a very young age, largely accept uncritically the ideologies of their family, school, religion, classmates, government, clubs, and organizations, in fact, any group they join due to the credulity of the uncultivated mind.
Conclusion
To conclude, “Salvation” by Langston Hughes illustrates clear examples of confirmation bias and sociocentric thinking. The main character encountered situations in which biases led him to lie and pretend to be religious. He is afraid that the society in which he lives will judge him, as his mind shows him that if he does not act in a certain way, he will be judged anyway. His actions were also dictated by socio-centric thinking as he was in a group of religious people, and what he thought depended on the group’s values.
Works Cited
Hughes, Langston, 1902-1967. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. New York, 1994.
“Kinds of Thinking.” English 1B, Spring 2021.
Ruggiero, V. Beyond Feelings: A Guide to Critical Thinking, 9th edition. 2022.