The Trump
phenomenon and the recent hand wringing about how social media can manipulate
public opinion has brought something about the human condition into stark
relief.
While the
rest of the species on the planet and Mother Nature herself would probably
disagree, one obvious advantage possessed by homo sapiens is our higher
cognitive ability. Humans have busy brains. What nature did not provide us
with, to this point at least, is a larger processing unit for attention and
short term memory. Sadly, this part of our brain seems to be rather under
developed and it means that we cannot fully attend to a lot of stimuli at any
one one time-attention and short term memory are interdependent.
This lack
of ability to attend to a lot of things at one time in our environment was not
much of a problem when we were wandering around in small nomadic tribes and
life was much simpler. Well, at least when it came to information processing: survival
might have been something much more complicated. In the 21st century this lack of
processing power has increasingly become something of a problem.
We adjust
to this inability to attend to lots of stimuli at any one time by using what
are called cognitive biases. These involve such unconscious activity such as
making assumptions from a small amount of information, stereotyping (from which
vilification of other groups comes), trusting what we think are reliable
sources, accepting things that happen to fit with our current belief systems,
and ignoring evidence in favour of convenient beliefs, for example (there are
about 20 or so of them).
These
biases are short cuts that mean that we can allocate our processing power to
other things. They have always been there and are not recent phenomena. We have
always been prone to believing what we hear from others, particularly if the source
is someone we like or admire, and if what we are hearing fits in with our
current beliefs about the world. We take it for granted that what we are being
given is the truth. Advertisers have known for a long time about how easy
humans are manipulated by simple images and slogans. Misinformation has also
been with us for eons too. Our gullibility is the result of what can best be
described as a neurological shortcoming.
High speed
communication, the Internet and Social media has just made the whole process a
lot easier, more pervasive and faster. It is amazing at how quickly
misinformation can circulate via Facebook or Twitter. Not so amazing, given
what we know about the human brain, is how quickly people believe what they
read, no matter the source. Images make the message even more believable. And
how quickly we are manipulated.
Just as
happened prior to electronic communication and social media, people are not
prone to take the time to check the facts. This is particularly true if what
they are reading fits with their current believes and biases. It is much easier
to believe it and gleefully pass it on. To check the facts just takes too much
effort. Much easier to adopt a lie than to find out the truth.
But we were
probably doing this when we first crawled out of the swamp. It’s just that now
we are doing it on a grand scale. The master manipulators are just laughing at
us. Sad, when it just takes a little bit of effort to check before becoming a
co-conspirator.
Not sure
about you but it bothers the hell out of me and I have become a lot more prone
to check out things before I repost. Even better, take action and inform your
network of the error.
