How Lies Live And Grow In The Brain – 2016 edition (Sam Wang)

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http://election.princeton.edu/2016/09/20/how-lies-live-and-grow-in-the-brain-2016-edition/

In 2008, conservative websites started the false belief that Barack Obama came from somewhere other than his birthplace of Hawaii. In the New York Times in 2008, Sandra Aamodt and I addressed the neuroscience of why people came to adopt this belief. Now that Donald Trump is attempting to hide his five-year involvement in the “birther” movement, our piece is timely again.

As my book co-author and I pointed out in our 2008 article, false beliefs can emerge from cognitive biases. Better Humans provides an excellent graphical compilation of such biases. For example, we have an innate tendency to mold information we recall into established mental frameworks. We tend to remember news that accords with our worldview, and discount statements that contradict it.

Birtherism took root with Republicans, including Donald Trump. The belief appeals to racist impulses. Obama’s ascent offends some people’s worldviews, as documented in this excellent essay by Jamelle Bouie. As Bernie Sanders has pointed out, Sanders’s father was also an immigrant, and yet Sanders does not encounter birtherism.

In this respect, Trump is just one of millions of birthers with a prior disposition to be skeptical of a black man becoming President. As the “birther” movement reached a peak, he got on the bandwagon with a series of public statements starting in March 2011. Trump’s statements in 2011 can account in part for his appeal in the GOP primaries, as an initial appeal to the approximately 23% of Republicans who held the same belief. Psychologists have suggested that legends propagate by striking an emotional chord. In the same way, ideas can spread by emotional selection, rather than by their factual merits. By endorsing birtherism, Trump was building an emotional allegiances. As late as 2014, he was still pushing the idea. My guess is that he is susceptible to the same cognitive biases as his supporters – he’s one of them, only with a high profile as a reality-show star.

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1. Thanks for this.

Posting @ fb. A high school classmate continually posts the lie, and I haven't challenged her directly, except to post the BIRTH CERTIFICATE, I'll let this speak to her (and others.)