RE: John Mahama’s 2nd Coup: A case of the presidency’s cognitive bias and mirror imaging

On January 24, 2023, Nii Teiko Tagoe, Executive Assistant in charge of ‘Twitter Matters’ at thePresidency, published that former president Mahama was directly responsible for the changes within the Minority leadership in parliament.

Nii Teiko caused to be published the following words: “John Dramani Mahama’s second coup d’etat in NDC leadership in Parliament, with the ultimate support of Chairman Asiedu Nketiah. Interesting times ahead”.

Available at (https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Mahama-s-2nd-coup-d

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Ironically, Nii Teiko attached a self-explanatory letter written by the NDC party’s new General Secretary, Fiifi Fiavi Kwetey.

The letter never mentioned that John Mahama had decided that the current leadership of the party’s Minority leadership should be replaced. The letter did not mention that at a meeting organised, orchestrated and chaired by Mahama, such a decision was taken. Infact, Mahama was not mentioned in the letter at all. Mahama was introduced by Mr. Tagoe even when no evidence linked him to the current decision of the “leadership of the Party” The reason for this is simple.

So far, none of the protagonist in the ongoing brouhaha has mentioned Mr. Mahama as being responsible for such a decision. Not even the writer of the said letter or Asiedu Nketia himself..

On the contrary, there is at least one public report quoting Mr. Kwesi Pratt Junior as suggesting that his checks suggest that Mahama was not responsible for the decision.

TAGOE’S COGNITIVE LAPSE

I would like to use the opportunity to address circumstances that might have led to this giant lapse in the thinking of Tagoe’s which may have influenced him to arrive at such a gross invalid conclusion about the involvement of HE Mahama.

Mr. Tagoe’s posturing is symptomatic of what Social Scientist and Psychologists call “Cognitive Bias”. In intelligence this practice is sometimes referred to as “Mirror Imaging”.

Mirror Imaging is simply a situation in intelligence analysis where an analyst analyzes a target based on how the analyst acts himself or would have acted if they were in the same or similar position of the target.This situation prevents the analyst looking at things critically, objectively and caused them to from overlook or ignore evidence before them.

Or “Mirror-imaging means that an analyst may perceive and process information through the filter of personal experience. Mirror-imaging imposes personal perspectives and cultural background on incomplete data, undermining objectivity” Such lapse in thinking has been responsible for catastrophic intelligence failures such as the inability to correctly estimate the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, it has been linked to a possible group mindset which blurred British Intelligence’s understanding of domestic terrorism resulting in lapses that led to the failure to detect and predict the London bombing.

Some scholars even blame cognitive bias as responsible for the invasion of Iraq, when after 9/11, Iraq was linked to Al-Qaeda in order to procure a disguise for invasion.

“Cognitive Bias” or “Biased Mindset” is the situation where a person or a group of people hold certain images or develop mindsets that resist new evidence and blurr their ability to acknowledge things for what they are. It forces them to assimilate new evidence into a predetermined mindset and blinds them to resist other analytic tools like the concept of competing hypotheses.

NANA ADDO IN THE MIRROR

Nii Teiko Tagoe by his tweet is exhibiting serious symptoms of “Mirror Imaging” and

“Cognitive Bias” which has forced him to resist the facts surrounding the controversial changes which have occurred within the Minority side of Parliament. Mr Tagoe, is superimposing the conduct of Nana Akuffo Addo’s, orchestration of a coup which led to the overthrow of the duly elected NPP National Chairman, Paul Afoko and the hard working Kwabena Agyapong-General Secretary of the NPP prior to the 2016 Presidential election.

The giant mirror standing in front of Tagoe is this single example of Nana Addo, which is that anytime you are uncomfortable or confronted with party officials who stand in your way, you orchestrate a coup against them and get them replaced. This is the mindset which Tagoe has mirror-image in analysing the possible cause of the shakeup within the Minority caucus in Parliament.

Whilst Mr Tagoe is at liberty to see things the way he wants, the youngman must understand that evidence is not like lottery, where you try your luck and where success is determined by an unknown and an unmeasurable probability. His cognitive bias has therefore limited his analytic abilities so much so that, even with the Fiifi Kwetey letter in hand, he still had to bring Mahama in, thinking he could use it to score political points, just like the way a non existent Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) was used to invade Iraq.

This brings me to the issue of politicisation of evidence, which even though it is linked to cognitive bias is something I will hang on the shelf for another day.