4 reasons why people ignore facts and believe fake news
Dr. Michael Shermer, Contributor at Business Insider
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-do-people-believe-fake-news-2017-3
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Tribal unity
We are a social primate species and we want to signal to others that we can be trusted as a reliable group member.
This means being consistent in agreeing with our other group members—whether that group is our political party or our religious faith—that we will not stray too far from our group’s core beliefs.
Thus, cognitive simplicity and cognitive dissonance may have an evolutionary adaptive purpose, as the social psychologist Carol Tavris outlined it in an email to me:
“When you find any cognitive mechanism that appears to be universal—such as the ease of creating ‘us-them’ dichotomies, ethnocentrism (‘my group is best’), or prejudice—it seems likely that it has an adaptive purpose; in these examples, binding us to our tribe would be the biggest benefit.In the case of cognitive dissonance, the benefit is functional: the ability to reduce dissonance is what lets us sleep at night and maintain our behavior, secure that our beliefs, decisions, and actions are the right ones. The fact that people who cannot reduce dissonance usually suffer mightily (whether over a small but dumb decision or because of serious harm inflicted on others) is itself evidence of how important the ability to reduce it is.”
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