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from the That's-what-they-WANT-you-to-think dept.
In the Salon
There seems to be a lot of science being thrown at the "Trump Phenomenon." Salon covers yet another, and interviews the author.
A new paper, recently presented at the American Political Science Association's annual convention, suggests a widespread motive driving people to share fake news, conspiracy theories and other hostile political rumors. "Many status-obsessed, yet marginalized individuals experience a 'Need for Chaos' and want to 'watch the world burn'," lead author Michael Petersen tweeted, announcing the availability of a preprint copy.
Truth, in such a worldview, is beside the point, which offers a new perspective on the limitations of fact-checking. The motivation behind sharing or spreading narratives one may not even believe can help make sense of a variety of threatening or confusing recent developments in advanced democracies. It also sheds light on disturbing similarities with outbreaks of ethnic or genocidal violence, such as those seen in Rwanda and the Balkan nations during the 1990s.
Preprint of the paper available at PsyArXiv, here. [DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/6m4ts]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @03:01PM (24 children)
Because we have not eradicated stupidity yet. It's on the list right after convincing the "Flat Earthers" that they are mistaken.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @03:14PM (1 child)
Hey, leave those stupid people be with their Nazi slurs, Russian collusion and other ridiculous delusions.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @06:49PM
Riiight, cause "good people on both sides" with one side literally carrying Nazi flags is delusional. Because Trump's closest associates selling him out for reduced sentences in no way indicates he is a criminal that worked with the Russians to get elected.
Yup, ignore reality, those are delusions, believe in your safe space where you can MAGA until your home gets foreclosed on.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday September 12 2018, @03:33PM (21 children)
The Authoritarians (available at https://www.theauthoritarians.org [theauthoritarians.org] ) has been getting around. As far as it goes, it's a pretty good explanation of how people with poor reasoning skills (aka stupid people) behave. The author tries very hard to avoid calling them stupid, but does not succeed.
As for conspiracy theories, I read another explanation that can be summed up as teleological thinking. Consider a typical children's show. They are full of objects that have been animated, and given human faces and dialog that suggest they have a purpose. Clouds like to rain on people and things, the sun likes to shine, stars like to twinkle, and trees, chairs, shoes, and even rocks apparently like to sit there and talk about philosophy, or maybe just offer advice on how to be a better sports player from their vantage point of happening to be located near or on a sports field of some sort from which they could observe, and so on. People usually but not always draw the line at body parts. Even in a TV show, your own knee isn't suddenly going to sprout a face to tell you that you hurt it and to not play such rough sports.
Need for chaos? It's a need, but not I think for chaos. Maybe it's a need for drama.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ikanreed on Wednesday September 12 2018, @03:41PM (16 children)
Umbrella term "Poor reasoning skills" isn't a primary predictor of right wing authoritarianism.
It is a predictor of conspiracy ideation and broad apolitical acceptance of conspiracy theories.
Research has indicated, however, that there's two flavors of conspiracy acceptance, and the broad apolitical kind isn't the majority anymore. Motivated reasoning based conspiracies are becoming dominant. And motivated reasoning is a strong predictor of right wing authoritarianism.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday September 12 2018, @04:36PM (2 children)
You mean the Bilderbergs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilderberg_Group [wikipedia.org] and the Illuminati http://www.theweek.co.uk/62399/what-is-the-illuminati-and-what-does-it-control [theweek.co.uk] aren't really causing Global Climate Change? :-|
(PS: For those who might not perceive my sarcasm, I am not a conspiracy theorist)
(Score: 3, Funny) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday September 12 2018, @11:26PM
Of course you're not a conspiracy theorist.
Pointing out to everyone how the Illuminati are causing climate change is just being neighbourly.
You should also let people know how the One World Government are preventing people from travelling to the ice wall that surrounds the flat Earth, keeping the truth from us!
THEY'RE DOING IT FOR THE LIZARD PEOPLE!!!!
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 13 2018, @03:31AM
Of course not, silly.
Global Climate Change is obviously caused by the patriarchy.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @04:56PM (10 children)
The first Google hit when I looked for it has this gem:
So while I accept the premise, I doubt your conclusion. [sciencedaily.com] With a little knowledge of current statistical data, [vox.com] I really doubt your conclusion. [psychologytoday.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday September 12 2018, @05:32PM (7 children)
It's a particularly facile brain that can take psychology discussion of fairly specific psychological phenomena with assloads of research related to them: motivated reasoning, right wing authoritarianism, conspiracy acceptance(and ideation), and reasoning skills, and manage to jump to facile totally unrelated subjects: gender difference in voting patterns, emotionality, and think they've addressed the point at all, much less rejected the primary thesis. Just utterly facile in the extreme.
You've kinda blithley pointed at emotionality and decided it represents bad reasoning skills. Which is, to my knowledge, a totally unsupported premise in all of psychology. In fact, neuroticism, which is kind of a more objectively measurable(and frequently measured) concept in psychology for emotional responsiveness(though it also represents other personality characteristics, I don't want to oversimplify) correlates with stronger critical thinking skills and even IQ.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @06:16PM (2 children)
Read more. Heightened emotionality has a negative correlation with critical thinking, it's so well researched I can't even be bothered finding a link.
Pfft! [sagepub.com]
The only thing that comes to mind when I read the following is "SJW":
Once again I provided correlations while you provided insults.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @08:05PM (1 child)
This would explain a lot about the cognitive process of right-wing authoritarianism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @08:23PM
It describes "going along to get along" as part of a collective. [sagepub.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @09:09PM
Psych research was turned into another arm of fake news long ago. You can read the journals of the 1930s- 1960s to see the older generation tried to stem the tide of BS but they lost because people would prefer to fund fake advances (significant p-values) over real ones (accurate predictions, repeatable experiments).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday September 13 2018, @02:43AM (2 children)
No more facile that the bullshit you just spewed. Note that motivated reasoning, for example, is a emotion-based response and hence, part of the behaviors of emotionality. It's quite relevant to discuss such things.
Second, I notice a glaring warning sign in "The Authoritarians", namely, it's about a particular subclass of authoritarians (the "Right Wing Authoritarian") rather than the whole lot. It takes a bunch of motivated reasoning and a bit of chutzpah to give a book a more or less universal label and then have it be about attacking ideological opponents. The sciency theater is pretty, but it doesn't change the underlying bias.
If you're depending on emotional behaviors to reason, then yes, you have bad reasoning skills. It's a given. Keep in mind the point of emotional behaviors. We are cognitively limited in a variety of ways. Emotions allow us to react quickly to changes while not having to add modules for each mode of operation. The brain changes its behavior on the fly to better fit the situation. That's great for survival/conflict situations where quick response is far better than reasoned but delayed response. It completely blows up however when you're in a situation where it is productive to deliberate for a long time. There are many such problems where coming up with an answer in seconds is completely useless. You're not in a race and your emotions aren't a great guide for finding useful answers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 13 2018, @06:57AM (1 child)
Yes it's a subclass but not what you think. Altemeyer writes
Because the submission occurs to traditional authority, I call these followers right-
wing authoritarians. I’m using the word “right” in one of its earliest meanings, for in
Old English “riht”(pronounced “writ”) as an adjective meant lawful, proper, correct,
doing what the authorities said. (And when someone did the lawful thing back then,
maybe the authorities said, with a John Wayne drawl, “You got that riht, pilgrim!”)
John Dean, who loves words the way I love pizza, pointed out this early meaning of “right”
after pinning me to the wall on how come I called this personality trait right-wing
authoritarianism. I’ve always called it right-wing authoritarianism rather than simply
authoritarianism in acknowledgment that left-wing authoritarianism also exists. An
authoritarian follower submits excessively to some authorities, aggresses in their name, and
insists on everyone following their rules. If these authorities are the established authorities
in society, that’s right-wing authoritarianism. If one submits to authorities who want to
overthrow the establishment, that’s left-wing authoritarianism, as I define things.
May I suggest you read the book, it's fairly interesting and funny too.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Thursday September 13 2018, @11:53AM
Yet another warning sign, pilgrim. Humor to disguise ambiguity of the crucial definition.
Most such definitions are based on what people believe, not on what their external political landscape looks like. And the definition of right wing authoritarian is pretty useless now since any authoritarian can be one, their authority just needs to be in charge.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday September 12 2018, @11:32PM (1 child)
The first (and second and third also) Google hits I got when I searched "Motivated reasoning" explained to me how "conservatives" set about deluding themselves about climate change, so, whatever.
Maybe you just got the republican Google.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Friday September 14 2018, @01:51PM
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 12 2018, @07:30PM (1 child)
There's also a slight difference in percentage of time the "conspiracy theory" turns out to be true.
In the old days of gray space aliens controlling the world, the odds of success were roughly zilch.
In the new days when "conspiracy theory" merely means a truth we are trying to keep quiet as per most of wikileaks documents, the contents of the emails on Hillaries illegal email server, etc, the odds of success end up pretty darn high, admittedly not 100% but certainly not the bad old days of 0%. Given that the lame legacy mainstream media is distrusted by the majority of the population, a "conspiracy theory" success rate around 50:50 puts it competitive with legacy media propaganda sources.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 13 2018, @06:42AM
VLM is more dumb than a bag of hammers. And it is true, because a hammer said so! Really? 14 Words? 88? I kill you like my grandfather killed your kind in Germany. They stood up and said, "we are the superior Race!" And he shot them through the head. Actually, too kind, by my way of thinking. Careful where you so identify in public, VLM, It is perfectly acceptable to punch Nazis in the face, since they never did sign an article of surrender, so technically they are enemies of the US, and all the other Allies. Careful where you vacation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @04:08PM (3 children)
FTFY
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @04:27PM
It's no surprise that a president who promises to punish the classes of people that some individuals hate will get the support of that part of the population.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @05:45PM (1 child)
Justice is nothing more than institutionalized revenge.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday September 13 2018, @02:45AM