… It recently struck us that confirmation bias is often conflated with “telling people what they want to hear,” which is actually a distinct phenomenon known as desirability bias, or the tendency to credit information you want to believe. … So we decided to conduct an experiment that would isolate […] Read more »
21st-century propaganda: A guide to interpreting and confronting the dark arts of persuasion
… 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 »
French voters are just as divided as American ones
Marine Le Pen. AP Photo/Michel Euler Michele Gelfand, University of Maryland and Joshua Conrad Jackson, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill On May 7, France will choose its next president. In the first round of voting on April 23, voters rejected candidates from the country’s established parties, lifting […] 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 »
Can the G.O.P. Turn Back the Tide of Town Hall Anger?
Republican members of Congress have a haunted look about them. Ordinarily, this is the time of year when they are in the best mood — the April recess is here, meaning a few friendly, sparsely attended town hall meetings, and then home early for family dinner. Not this year. Many […] Read more »
Why Americans Vote ‘Against Their Interest’: Partisanship
… “Partisan identification is bigger than anything the party does,” said Frances Lee, a professor at the University of Maryland who wrote a book on partisan polarization. Rather, it stems from something much more fundamental: people’s idea of who they are. For American voters, party affiliation is a way to […] Read more »