News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
[I just wish that this had made some references to authors who provide
ways to evaluate claims and to make this an automatic habit. These
include Max Stirner, Alfred Korzybski, Robert Anton Wilson, Noam
Chomsky, and George Lakoff, among others.--DC]
*****
http://tinyurl.com/2bcg7p
Cognitive Science and FactCheck.org, or Why We (Still) Do What We Do
October 17, 2007
by Joe Miller
Have you heard about how Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet?
What about how Iraq was responsible for the attacks on the World Trade
Center? Or maybe the one about how George W. Bush has the lowest IQ of
any U.S. president ever? Chances are pretty good that you might even
believe one (or more) of these claims. And yet all three are false. At
http://FactCheck.org
our stock in trade is debunking these sorts of
false or misleading political claims, so when the Wa****ngton Post told
us that we might just be making things worse, it really made us stop and
think.
A Sept. 4 article in the Post discussed several recent studies that all
seemed to point to the same conclusion: Debunking myths can backfire
because people tend to remember the myth but forget what the debunker
said about it. As Hebrew University psychologist Ruth Mayo explained to
the Post, "If you think 9/11 and Iraq, this is your association, this is
what comes in your mind. Even if you say it is not true, you will
eventually have this connection with Saddam Hussein and 9/11." That
leaves myth busters like us with a quandary: Could we, by exposing
political malarkey, just be cementing it in voters' minds? Are we
contributing to the problem we hope to solve?
Possibly. Yet we think that what we do is still necessary. And we think
the facts back us up.
The Post story wasn't all that surprising to those who follow the
findings of cognitive science research, which tells us much of our
thinking happens just below the level of consciousness. The more times
we hear two particular bits of information associated, for example, the
more likely it is that we'll recall those bits of information. This is
how we learn multiplication tables -- and why we still know the Big Mac
jingle.
Our brains also take some surprising shortcuts. In a study published in
the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Virginia Tech
psychologist Kimberlee Weaver shows that the more easily we recall
something the more likely we are to think of it as being true. It's a
useful shortcut since, typically, easily recalled information really is
true. But combine this rule with the brain's tendency to better remember
bits of information that are repeated frequently, and we can run into
trouble: We're likely to believe anything we hear repeated frequently
enough. At FactCheck.org we've noted how political spin-masters exploit
this tendency ruthlessly, repeating dubious or false claims endlessly
until, in the minds of many voters, they become true. Making matters
worse, a study by Hebrew University's Mayo shows that people often
forget "denial tags." Thus many people who hear the phrase "Iraq does
not possess WMDs" will remember "Iraq" and "possess WMDs" while
forgetting the "does not" part.
The counter to this requires an understanding of how it is that the
brain forms beliefs.
In 1641, French philosopher René Descartes suggested that the act of
understanding an idea comes first; we accept the idea only after
evaluating whether or not it rings true. Thirty-six years later, the
Dutch philosopher Baruch de Spinoza offered a very different account of
belief formation. Spinoza proposed that understanding and believing
happen simultaneously. We might come to reject something we held to be
true after considering it more carefully, but belief happens prior to
the examination. On Spinoza's model, the brain forms beliefs
automatically. Rejecting a belief requires a conscious act.
Unfortunately, not everyone bothers to examine the ideas they encounter.
On the Cartesian model, that failure results in neither belief nor
disbelief. But on the Spinozan model we end up with a lot of unexamined
(and often false) convictions.
One might rightly wonder how a 17th-century philosophical dispute could
possibly be relevant to modern myth-busting. Interestingly, though,
Harvard psychologist Daniel T. Gilbert designed a series of experiments
aimed specifically at determining whether Descartes or Spinoza got it
right. Gilbert's verdict: Spinoza is the winner. People who fail to
carry through the evaluation process are likely to believe whatever
statements they read. Gilbert concludes that "[p]eople do have the power
to assent, to reject, and to suspend their judgment, but only after they
have believed the information to which they have been exposed."
Gilbert's studies show that, initially at least, we do believe
everything we hear. But it's equally obvious that we reject many of
those beliefs, sometimes very quickly and other times only after
considerable work. We may not be skeptical by nature, but we can
nonetheless learn to be skeptical. Iowa State's Gary Wells has shown
that social interaction with those who have correct information is often
sufficient to counter false views. Indeed, a study published in the
Journal of Applied Psychology by the University of Southern California's
Peter Kim shows that meeting a charge (regardless of its truth or
falsity) with silence increases the chances that others will believe the
claim. Giving false claims a free pass, in other words, is more likely
to result in false beliefs (a notion with which 2004 presidential
candidate John Kerry, who didn't immediately respond to accusations by a
group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth about his Vietnam record, is
all too familiar).
So, yes, a big ad budget often trumps the truth, but that doesn't mean
we should go slumping off in existential despair. You see, the Spinozan
model shows that we will believe whatever we hear only if the process of
evaluating those beliefs is somehow short-circuited. Humans are not
helpless automatons in the face of massive propaganda. We may initially
believe whatever we hear, but we are fully capable of evaluating and
rejecting beliefs that turn out not to be accurate. Our brains don't do
this naturally; maintaining a healthy skeptical attitude requires some
conscious effort on our part. It also requires a basic understanding of
logic -- and it requires accurate information. That's where this Web
site comes in.
If busting myths has some bad consequences, allowing false information
to flow unchecked is far worse. Facts are essential if we are to
overcome our brain's tendency to believe everything it hears. As a
species, we're still pretty new to that whole process. Aristotle
invented logic just 2,500 years ago -- a mere blink of the eye when
compared with the 200,000 years we Homo sapiens relied on our brain's
reflex responses to avoid being eaten by lions. We still have a long way
to go. Throw in a tsunami of ads and Internet bluster and the path gets
even harder, which is why we're delighted to find new allies at
PolitiFact.com and the Wa****ngton Post's FactChecker. We'll continue to
bring you the facts. And you can continue to use them wisely.
Sources:
Descartes, Rene. Principles of Philosophy. Tr. John Cottingham.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985 [1644].
Gilbert, Daniel T., Romin W. Tafarodi and and Patrick S. Malone. "You
Can't Not Believe Everything Your Read." Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology 65.2 (1993): 221-233.
Kim, Peter H., et al. "Silence Speaks Volumes: The Effectiveness of
Reticence in Comparison to Apology and Denial for Responding to
Integrity- and Competence-Based Trust Violations. Journal of Applied
Psychology 92.4 (2007): 893-908.
Mayo, Ruth, Yaacov Schul and Eugene Burnstein. "'I Am Not Guilty' vs. 'I
Am Innocent': Successful Negation May Depend on the Schema Used for its
Encoding." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 40.4 (2004): 433-449.
Spinoza, Baruch de. Ethics. Tr. Edwin Curley. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1994 [1677].
Weaver, Kimberlee, et al. "Inferring the Popularity of an Opinion from
its Familiarity: A Repetitive Voice Can Sound Like a Chorus." Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 92.5 (2007): 821-833.
Wright, E.F. and Gary L. Wells. "Does Group Discussion Attenuate the
Dispositional Bias?" Journal of Applied Psychology 15 (1985): 531-546.
*****
Misinformation & Disinformation
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
[I started this list long ago, and never got very far.--DC]
There's a lot of misinformation and disinformation going
around. These websites provide a place to check the accuracy
of dubious claims. I would welcome suggested additions to
the list.
Of course, one should read these websites with appropriate
skepticism, as well.
ConWebWatch
Conservative website watchdog.
http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/
Editor and Publisher
Media news and watchdog.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/index.jsp
FactCheck: Annenberg Political Fact Check
Checks political ads and other political claims for factual accuracy.
http://www.factcheck.org/
FactChecker
http://blog.wa****ngtonpost.com/fact-checker/
FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Media)
Media watchdog.
http://www.fair.org/whats-new.html
How to Identify Misinformation
Some comic relief from the Bush administration, including its own good
wallop of misinformation. By coincidence, all of the websites "known for
spreading false stories" listed are highly critical of the Bush
administration.
http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2005/Jul/27-595713.html
Media Matters for America
Media watchdog. Highly recommended.
http://mediamatters.org/
NewsHounds
FOX News watchdog.
http://www.newshounds.us/
PolitiFact
Political fact checker.
http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/
PRWatch
http://www.prwatch.org/
Snopes
Urband legends, Internet rumors, etc.
http://snopes.com
SpinWatch
http://spinwatch.org/
STATS (Statistical *****sment Service)
Critiques media re****ting of science and statistical information.
http://www.stats.org/index.htm
The Straight Dope
http://www.straightdope.com/
talk.origins Archive
Creationism and Intelligent Design
http://www.talkorigins.org/
*****
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
http://tinyurl.com/3akhhr
Lord We˙rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/clorebeast/
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"
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