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 »
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 »
Trump’s Method, Our Madness
… Much has been written about “post-truth” politics in the context of the recent presidential election, and rightly so, as Trump’s relationship with the truth is not the same old conservative legerdemain. But in an important sense, anti-fact campaigns, such as the effort led by archconservatives like the Koch brothers to […] Read more »
This Article Won’t Change Your Mind: The facts on why facts alone can’t fight false beliefs
… You can just switch off the radio, change channels, only like the Facebook pages that give you the kind of news you prefer. You can construct a pillow fort of the information that’s comfortable. Most people aren’t totally ensconced in a cushiony cave, though. They build windows in the […] Read more »
‘Alternative facts’: A psychiatrist’s guide to twisted relationships to truth
Ronald W. Pies, Tufts University The phrase “alternative facts” has recently made the news in a political context, but psychiatrists like me are already intimately acquainted with the concept – indeed, we hear various forms of alternate reality expressed almost every day. All of us need to parse perceived from […] Read more »