CivilPolitics’ mission is to educate the public on evidence-based methods for improving inter-group dialogue, with evidence defined broadly to include academic studies, empirical studies of community interventions, and also the practical wisdom learned by organizations that are bringing people together in the community.  As part of this last area of evidence, we are asking our partners in the community to answer a set of semi-standardized questions designed to help us learn the common themes that run through successful community work.  If you would like to have your organizations’ work profiled, please do contact us and/or fill out this form.  This is the seventh post in the series that details the experiences of Spencer Greenberg, who is the founder of ClearerThinking.org, which produced this political bias exercise, among other programs.

What is your group’s mission?

ClearerThinking.org’s mission is to help you make better decisions and avoid bias, both in your own life (e.g. your work, relationships and education), and in decisions you make that impact society at large (e.g. who you vote for and which policies you support).

What specific programs/events/curriculum do you run? Briefly describe what it is you do.

We create free courses, tools and tests designed to help you understand important findings from cognitive science, psychology, economics, and mathematics, and apply these findings in your day to day decisions. We are a non-partisan organization.  A

Our projects include:

Subtitling political debate videos (in collaboration with philosopher Stefan Schubert) to make you aware when factual inaccuracies, ovations, logical fallacies occur:

http://www.clearerthinking.org/#!the-2016-presidential-debates–subtitled/wt7g0

Our political bias test (also made in collaboration with Stefan Schubert), which helps you understand ways which your political views may be biased or inaccurate:

http://programs.clearerthinking.org/political_bias_test.html

Our Belief Challenger program, which walks you through two evidenced based techniques we developed for helping you challenging deeply held beliefs:

http://programs.clearerthinking.org/challenge_your_deepest_beliefs.html

Our Common Misconceptions test, which helps you understand whether you tend to be overconfident or underconfident, and teaches you about common misconceptions you may hold:

http://programs.clearerthinking.org/common_misconceptions.html

We have many other free tools, tests and programs as well.

What has worked well in your programs/events? If someone else wanted to replicate your programs, what specific advice would you give them as far as things to do to replicate your successes?

We have found that people love to learn about themselves, and therefore that offering tests can be a powerful way to make people more interested in important topics like bias and decision making.

What have you tried in your progams/events that has NOT worked well? If someone else wanted to replicate your programs, what advice would you give them as far as things to AVOID doing?

We find that people greatly prefer shorter online programs to longer ones, and therefore shorter programs may end up having larger impact overall.

Among the ideas listed on CivilPolitics’ website, based on psychological research, that have been suggested as ways to reduce intergroup divisions. Which of these ideas are reflected in the work you do?  

Providing Information on Common Goals/Threats, Reducing Certainty of Individual Beliefs, Helping people see their own bias and become motivated to reduce it.

We help people challenge their existing beliefs with programs such as our Belief Challenger program, and our Common Misconception Test.

Where can others learn more about what you do?

ll of our content is free, and available on our website: http://www.clearerthinking.org