Motivated reasoning, bias, fake news, conspiracy theories, and more, explained.
By Brian Resnick@B_resnickbrian@vox.com Updated Apr 15, 2018, 1:37pm EDT
In January 2017, when then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer tried to claim that President Donald Trump’s inauguration was the most-watched in history, it felt like the beginning of a new, dark era of politics and public life.
As it has matured, the Trump era of conservative politics is increasingly defined by its tribalism and fear and the fracturing of our sense of a shared reality.
And it’s pretty disorienting.
I’ve spent much of the past several years reporting on political psychology, asking the country’s foremost experts on human behavior some variation of, “What the hell is going on in the United States?”
Thankfully, at a time when we really need answers, they often deliver.
Here are the social science lessons I keep coming back to, to help me explain what’s happening in America in the Trump era. Perhaps you’ll find them helpful too.
- Rooting for a team alters your perception of the world.
- We can be immune to uncomfortable facts.
- Leaders like Trump have special powers to sway public opinion.
- People don’t often make decisions based on the truth.
- Political opponents are often really, really bad at arguing with one another.
- White people’s fear of being replaced is incredibly powerful.
- It’s shockingly easy to grow numb to mass suffering.
- Fake news preys on our biases — and will be very hard to stamp out.
- Conspiracy theories may be rampant, but they’re a specific reaction to a dark, uncertain world.
- An uncomfortable theme you might notice here is that our leaders, the groups we were born into, and, increasingly, our echo-chambered media ecosystems can bring out the worst psychological biases that exist in all of us.
Read more
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/4/11/16897062/political-psychology-trump-explain-studies-research-science-motivated-reasoning-bias-fake-news
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