Why the wiring of our brains makes it hard to stop climate change

… Humans aren’t well wired to act on complex statistical risks. We care a lot more about the tangible present than the distant future. Many of us do that to the extreme — what behavioral scientists call hyperbolic discounting — which makes it particularly hard to grapple with something like […] Read more »

Who Falls for Fake News? The Roles of Analytic Thinking, Motivated Reasoning, Political Ideology, and Bullshit Receptivity

Inaccurate beliefs pose a threat to democracy and fake news represents a particularly egregious and direct avenue by which inaccurate beliefs have been propagated via social media. Here we investigate the cognitive psychological profile of individuals who fall prey to fake news. CONT. Gordon Pennycook & David G. Rand, Yale […] Read more »

Why is climate change such a hard sell in the US?

People gather outside the White House in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, June 1, 2017, to protest President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate change accord. AP Photo/Susan Walsh Firmin DeBrabander, Maryland Institute College of Art President Donald Trump on June 1 took the dramatic […] Read more »