Not many people have a firm, hard core commitment to truth these days. Most people fall for the Confirmation Bias fallacy – if the information supports their point of view – it’s true. If it doesn’t, it’s not true. This makes them easily susceptible to all manner of outright lies and deviously crafted half-truths. Social media makes it easy to spread the misinformation to like-minded friends, making the lies spread exponentially. A recent piece in the New York Times exposed both left-leaning and right-leaning culprits as guilty on all charges. The following is an excerpt, followed by just two possible remedies.
“(People) become more prone to misinformation when three things
happen. First, and perhaps most important, is when conditions in society make
people feel a greater need for what social scientists call ingrouping — a belief that their social identity is a
source of strength and superiority, and that other groups can be blamed for
their problems.
“As much as we like to think of ourselves as rational beings
who put truth-seeking above all else, we are social animals wired for survival.
In times of perceived conflict or social change, we seek security in groups. And that makes us eager to consume
information, true or not, that lets us see the world as a conflict putting our
righteous ingroup against a nefarious outgroup.
“Framing everything as a grand conflict against scheming
enemies can feel enormously reassuring. And that’s why perhaps the greatest
culprit of our era of misinformation may be, more than any one particular
misinformer, the era-defining rise in
social polarization.
“Growing hostility between the two halves of America feeds
social distrust, which makes people more prone to rumor and falsehood. It also
makes people cling much more tightly to their partisan identities. And once our
brains switch into ‘identity-based conflict’ mode, we become desperately hungry for information that will affirm that
sense of us versus them, and much less concerned about things like truth or
accuracy.
“The second driver of the misinformation era is the emergence of high-profile political figures
who encourage their followers to indulge their desire for identity-affirming
misinformation. After all, an atmosphere of all-out political conflict
often benefits those leaders, at least in the short term, by rallying people
behind them.
“Then there is the
third factor — a shift to social media, which is a powerful outlet for
composers of disinformation, a pervasive vector for misinformation itself and a
multiplier of the other risk factors.
William J. Brady, a Yale University social psychologist:
“’Media has changed, the environment has changed, and that
has a potentially big impact on our natural behaviour. When you post things,
you’re highly aware of the feedback that you get, the social feedback in terms
of likes and shares.’ So when misinformation
appeals to social impulses more than the truth does, it gets more attention
online, which means people feel rewarded and encouraged for spreading it. ‘Depending
on the platform, especially, humans are very sensitive to social reward.’ Research
demonstrates that people who get positive feedback for posting inflammatory or
false statements become much more likely to do so again in the future.
“In 2016, the media scholars Jieun Shin and Kjerstin Thorson
analyzed a data set of 300 million tweets from the 2012 election. Twitter
users, they found, ‘selectively share fact-checking messages that cheerlead
their own candidate and denigrate the opposing party’s candidate.’ And when
users encountered a fact-check that revealed their candidate had gotten
something wrong, their response wasn’t
to get mad at the politician for lying. It was to attack the fact checkers. ‘We
have found that Twitter users tend to retweet to show approval, argue, gain
attention and entertain,’ researcher Jon-Patrick Allem wrote last year,
summarizing a study he had co-authored. ‘Truthfulness
of a post or accuracy of a claim was not an identified motivation for
retweeting.’
“In a highly polarized society like today’s United States —
or, for that matter, India or parts of Europe — those incentives pull heavily
toward ingroup solidarity and outgroup derogation. They do not much favor
consensus reality or abstract ideals of accuracy.
“As people become more prone
to misinformation, opportunists and charlatans are also getting better at
exploiting this. That can mean tear-it-all-down populists who rise on
promises to smash the establishment and control minorities. It can also mean
government agencies or freelance hacker groups stirring up social divisions
abroad for their benefit. But the roots of the crisis go deeper.
“’The problem is that when we encounter opposing views in the
age and context of social media, it’s not like reading them in a newspaper
while sitting alone,’ the sociologist Zeynep Tufekci wrote in a much-circulated
MIT Technology Review article. ‘It’s
like hearing them from the opposing team while sitting with our fellow fans in
a football stadium. Online, we’re connected with our communities, and we
seek approval from our like-minded peers. We bond with our team by yelling at
the fans of the other one.’”
Source
‘Belonging Is Stronger Than Facts’: The Age
of Misinformation https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/world/asia/misinformation-disinformation-fake-news.html
The
Best Long-Term Solution
“Those who understand the need to stop
America’s slide into ever-deepening irrationality must push our society to
raise up new generations of thinking citizens who are capable of identifying
and shrugging off unproven claims. The American mind can be repaired in the
long term by teaching the skills and principles of critical thinking to every
child. I am aware of the grandiose and cliché-like feel that comes with citing
education as the only salvation from a big problem. But in this case, it really
is the way.
“Making critical thinking a national
educational norm is the cognitive vaccine America needs to have a fighting
chance of maintaining sufficient sanity. Good thinking prevents and alleviates
bad thinking. Young students can be taught reason and skepticism as basic life
skills. This would not be the kind of education that involves learning a bunch
of facts for later regurgitation. Critical thinking is more like learning a
trade. As one might train to weld or build furniture, one can learn how to
think well out in the world.
“Critical thinking courses for all
elementary, middle school, and high school students might include
age-appropriate lessons on how to ask the right questions when confronted with
an unusual or important claim; a review of common logical fallacies (with an emphasis
on relevance to everyday experiences); how to select reliable information
sources; a basic survey of the surprising but normal workings of a human brain
(how the brain processes visual input, seeks patterns, why memory is
unreliable, subconscious influence on conscious thinking, etc.); review how the
‘critical thinking’ concept can be abused and misrepresented (Many QAnon
believers, for example, urge people to ‘think critically’ and often say ‘do
your own research’. But this means little when poor information sources, flawed
logic, and bogus evidence are attached to such advice.); historical review of
past mass delusions, frauds, and costly mistakes rooted in poor thinking; and
discussions about the many positive benefits of good thinking (increased odds
for a safer, more efficient, and productive life).
“Given its importance to individual and
national health, why not teach critical thinking every day in every school? Why
not give it the same attention and emphasis as reading, mathematics, the Pledge
of Allegiance, or anything else? Doing this would not preclude addressing the
social and health needs of struggling Americans. It would not stand in the way
of the need for intelligent social media regulation, vigilance against domestic
terrorism, or general science and history education.”
Source
How to Repair the American Mind: Solving
America’s Cognitive Crisis https://skepticalinquirer.org/2021/04/how-to-repair-the-american-mind-solving-americas-cognitive-crisis/
One-On-One
“When we’re in an argument with someone, we
should be thinking about how they can change their mind and look good –
maintain or even enhance their face – at the same time. Often this is very hard
to do in the moment of the dispute itself, when opinion and face are bound even
more tightly together than they are before or after. However, by showing that
we have listened to and respected our interlocutor’s point of view, we make it
more likely that they will come around at some later point. If and when they
do, we should avoid scolding them for not agreeing with us all along. It’s
amazing quite how often people in polarised debates do this; it hardly makes it
more tempting to switch sides. Instead, we should remember that they have
achieved something we have not: a change of mind.” (Adapted from Conflicted:
Why Arguments Are Tearing Us Apart and How They Can Bring Us Together by Ian
Leslie)
Source
How to have better arguments online https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/16/how-to-have-better-arguments-social-media-politics-conflict
Going
Deeper
The problem of living inside echo
chambers https://theconversation.com/the-problem-of-living-inside-echo-chambers-110486
This Is How Your Fear and Outrage Are Being
Sold for Profit https://medium.com/@tobiasrose/the-enemy-in-our-feeds-e86511488de
Biases in algorithms hurt those looking for
information on health https://theconversation.com/biases-in-algorithms-hurt-those-looking-for-information-on-health-140616
United States of Conspiracy: An Interview
with Anna Merlan https://longreads.com/2019/04/17/interview-with-anna-merlan/
10 ways to spot online misinformation https://theconversation.com/10-ways-to-spot-online-misinformation-132246
"We're so freaking polarized":
See how Americans with opposing views interpret the same situation https://www.cbsnews.com/news/republicans-democrats-polarized-american-politics/
Evaluating information: what you should
know https://media.chop.edu/data/files/pdfs/vaccine-education-center-evaluating-info-qa.pdf
How Honest Are People on Social Media? https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/naked-truth/201807/how-honest-are-people-social-media
Seven ways to protect yourself against misinformation https://research.asu.edu/seven-ways-to-protect-yourself-against-misinformation
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Photo: https://givingcompass.org/article/how-to-increase-immunity-to-truth-decay/
Jerry De Luca is a Christian freelance writer who loves perusing dozens of interesting and informative publications. When he finds any useful info he summarizes it, taking the main points, and creates a (hopefully) helpful blog post.
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