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posted by chromas on Wednesday September 12 2018, @02:20PM   Printer-friendly
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]


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @06:16PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @06:16PM (#733763)

    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.

    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.

    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.

    Pfft! [sagepub.com]

    The only thing that comes to mind when I read the following is "SJW":

    The second dynamic that generates conflict over risk issues is motivated reasoning. Motivated reasoning refers to the tendency of people to conform assessments of information to some goal or end extrinsic to accuracy (Kunda, 1990; Balcetis & Dunning, 2008; Dunning, 1999; Ditto, Pizarro & Tannenbaum, 2009).

    The goal of protecting one’s identity or standing in an affinity group that shares fundamental values can generate motivated cognition relating to policy-relevant facts (Cohen, 2003; Sherman & Cohen, 2006). Even among modestly partisan individuals, shared ideological or cultural commitments are likely to be intertwined with membership in communities of one sort or another that furnish those individuals with important forms of support—emotional and psychic as well as material (Green, Palmquist & Schikler, 2002). If a proposition about some policy-relevant fact comes to be commonly associated with membership in such a group, the prospect that one might form a contrary position can threaten one’s standing within it.

    Once again I provided correlations while you provided insults.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @08:05PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @08:05PM (#733815)

    If a proposition about some policy-relevant fact comes to be commonly associated with membership in such a group, the prospect that one might form a contrary position can threaten one’s standing within it.

    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

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @08:23PM (#733823)

      This would explain a lot about the cognitive process of right-wing authoritarianism.

      It describes "going along to get along" as part of a collective. [sagepub.com]