… The belief, or rather hope, that humankind is ultimately rational has gripped Western politics at least since Descartes, and inspired such 19th-century optimists as Thomas Jefferson and John Stuart Mill. “Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe,” Jefferson famously wrote. But in […] Read more »
People Have Limited Knowledge. What’s the Remedy? Nobody Knows
THE KNOWLEDGE ILLUSION Why We Never Think Alone By Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach … The world is becoming ever more complex, and people fail to realize just how ignorant they are of what’s going on. Consequently some who know next to nothing about meteorology or biology nevertheless conduct fierce […] Read more »
Partisanship: A powerful drug
Partisanship is an increasingly powerful, mind-altering drug. It affects not only our perception of what is right and wrong, but also of what is real. CONT. Mark Mellman (Mellman Group), The Hill Read more »
Why faith in the media might not be as low as polls suggest
Gallup reported last fall that trust in the news media had plummeted to 32 percent, an all-time low — or, at least, the lowest level since the polling firm started tracking, in 1972. But what, exactly, does that mean? Well, when Gallup inquires about trust, it asks about people’s confidence […] Read more »
Why Objectively False Things Continue to Be Believed
… Partisan polarization is now so extreme in the United States that it affects the way that people consume and understand information — the facts they believe, and what events they think are important. … Mr. Trump, perhaps unconsciously, has grasped a core truth of modern politics: that voters tend to […] Read more »
7 psychological concepts that explain the Trump era of politics
These are strange, unsettling times. And for the past several months, I’ve been asking psychologists variations on a basic question: What research can best help us reckon with uncomfortable social and political realities — like the rise of Donald Trump, the widening partisan split, the divisiveness that comes with multiculturalism? […] Read more »