Surprising threat to democracy: our brains

Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they ... Full Story »

Posted by Sirajul Islam - via Jay Rosen, Boston Globe, Memeorandum, Jeremy Caplan (t), Jon Mitchell (t), Jeppe Kabell (t), Rachel Fus (t), Sirajul Islam (t), Tshiung Han See (t), Donica Mensing (t), Kaizar Campwala (t), Subramanya Sastry (f), Jon Mitchell (f), Tshiung Han See (f), Alex Williams (f), JR Russ (f), Allan Foster (f), Fabrice Florin (f), mark breslauer (f)

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Review

Jack Dinkmeyer
4.1
by Jack Dinkmeyer - Jul. 11, 2010

An insightful article which discusses the ways we build our belief systems. Emotion, background, experience, ego, education, even negativism, triumph facts and truth. While we tend not to believe it, we think more with our emotional side than with our intellectual side. A must read for anyone wanting to understand today's political discourse.

This would also explain why demagogues benefit from keeping people agitated. The more threatened people feel, the less likely they are to listen to dissenting opinions, and the more easily controlled they are.

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Jack's Rating

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