8 Reasons Why We Believe Bull Crap

Install Raid for Free ✅ IOS/ANDROID/PC: https://clcr.me/H9FMlh
and get a special starter pack 💥 Available only for the next 30 days

All of us fall for bull crap, but how can we avoid it? Well, for starters, it's good to be aware of these eight reasons why we fall for bull crap in the first place.
Produced by Matt Beat. All images and videos either created by Matt Beat or found in the public domain or used under fair use guidelines. Music by Electric Needle Room ("Bull Crap," which you can stream here: https://open.spotify.com/track/42GmMcqOIaeubmbgFFiL1d?si=d45e1170a1ff4349)
Additional music by Geographer and Godmode.

Sources/further reading:
Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain-babble/201412/why-were-so-easily-fooled-and-why-it-matters
https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shermer_why_people_believe_weird_things?language=en
https://psu.pb.unizin.org/socialpsychmethodsjmc948/chapter/persuasion-so-easily-fooled-noba/
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/psychology-mental-shortcuts-decision-making
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic
https://www.jneurosci.org/content/37/13/3588
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-pseudoscience/anti-vaccine-movement-2020
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/thoughts-thinking/201911/7-reasons-why-we-fall-fake-news
https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/is-milk-bad-for-you-heres-what-the-science-says
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-people-fall-for-conspiracy-theories/
https://www.businessinsider.com/believing-conspiracy-theories-makes-people-feel-special-2017-9
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0963721416649347
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/false-news-travels-6-times-faster-on-twitter-than-truthful-news
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/a-growing-majority-of-americans-think-global-warming-is-happening-and-are-worried/

So why do we believe bull crap? Why can’t we critically think? Or why do we find critical thinking so difficult?
Well, first of all, we mostly rely on our brains to work in default mode.
Our brains are wired to find quick answers
Our brains are constantly trying to look for shortcuts and patterns. There’s even a fancy name for this. Psychologists call this heuristics. Basically, a heuristic is any approach to finding a quick solution or reaching a quick conclusion that is not the best or even rational, but it’s good enough so we can go on with our lives. Heuristics are cognitive shortcuts that we develop through our past experiences, and they come in pretty handy. Imagine having to stress out over every single decision in life. It’d be difficult to get anything done. Enter heuristics, so that our brains can save energy and work more efficiently. But those shortcuts don’t always help us.
So check it out. There was a 2008 CalTech study in which scientists hooked up an fMRI to subjects and presented them with different glasses of wine, labeled from $5 all the way up to $90. However, the scientists never told the subjects that the wine in every single glass was actually the exact same. Subjects tried both wines, and later reported the $90 tasted better. More importantly, the medial prefrontal cortex of their brains for these same folks became more active when they were tasting the wine. This part of the brain is important for decision making, planning future events, and reward comparison. So basically, that part of their brains became active not due to true sensory signals or inherent qualities, but to SIGNALS of quality. Like the labels.
Our brains can fool us due to being stuck in default mode. In fact, brain teasers exist as a way we can escape our default mode.

We don’t evaluate credibility
We often just accept new information as it is given to us. Whether we actually admit it or not, we often automatically trust a source no matter what it is.
Speaking of biases…
We all have confirmation bias
Confirmation bias is the tendency of people to favor information that confirms their existing beliefs or hypotheses. We see it when folks pick information that supports their own views, when they ignore information that hurts their views, but especially looking at how people think when they interact with ambiguous evidence. Let’s pretend your existing beliefs or hypotheses are this bucket. It’s actually fairly easy to take bits of information from all over the place to neatly fit into your bucket. You can even cherry pick data or put a lid on that bucket to keep out all new data. It’s pretty convenient.
One of the most common ways con artists persuade people is by tapping into their existing emotions. Fear and anger especially work well. Getting folks scared or angry is a great way to get them to believe bull crap, as these emotions make them less likely to think rationally.
#psychology #medialiteracy #education

Видео 8 Reasons Why We Believe Bull Crap канала The Beat Goes On