Strategies for Building Resilience

It only happens every four years, and this time it's here. the biggest tournament in the world. Stadium shaking, flags waving. This is history. you want to be there. But real life can make it tough, work, busy schedules and the price That's where Priceline comes in. Priceline has millions of deals on flights, hotels, and rental cars so you can go see it live. So find a great deal and make the trip happen. Rally the crew, go see the game live, turn your dream trip into reality. Book now with Priceline. You can go to kitted k It ed. shop And use the code smart fifty SMART five zero at checkout And you will get half off a set of thinking superpowers. in a box If you want to know more about what I'm talking about. Check it out Middle of the show They pall down into the middle of the partyight Welome to the You are N so smart podcast. Episode three hundred forty three The classic example is like someone who is very convinced they are unbiased, but that thought process of really stridently thinking you're unbiased ironically makes you more biased because you're not open to the idea that you could be wrong. So you're just following this very narrow track. in your mind that allows you to believe various falsehoods, even though you think you're not That was the voice of Matthew Facciiani, who is a doctor of sociology, a sociologist. and interdisciplinary social scientists, which means he researches neuroscience, psychology, and sociology And then mushes them all together to help make sense of the world His focus these days is his specialty is media literacy, which means studies misinformation and polarization and how nefarious actors manipulate all of us on purpose to get us to think feel and do things they would like us to think feel and do He studies all of that and then comes up with ways to better combat. and teaches it to people in a form of Media literacy. He has a podcast called Misguided And he just released a new book titled Misguided, which is all about Miss Information starts how it spreads. what to do about it? And that title, it's important here misguided Because as Facciiania explains, the research is clear. The evidence is overwhelming People who fall for Fake news People who share misinformation, who believe it. People who just believe things that to other people seem clearly false These people are not stupid. They're not crazy For the most part They have been miss guided And as Fatiani's research reveals and his book explains There are a lot of nefarious actors out there Organizations and individuals political institutions, corporate entities and so on count on this. They understand how people actually work And they use that understanding purposefully generate Miss. information And these' Nefarious actors, they produce such misinformation a lot That way you get exposed to it repeatedly All in an attempt to misguide you toward the assumptions, conclusions, and behaviors they would like you to assume conclude and engage in We will talk about all of that in just a moment. We'll get into things like superorddinate identities and affect control theory. What we can do about all of this is the train headed for the cliff or can we actually environment where there's a whole lot less misinformation or just inoculate ourselves against it. All of these things are coming up soon The first I wanted to take a second to define What is Misinformation scientifically speaking According to the American Psychological Association, misinformation is quite simply False or inaccurate information Well disinformation is false information which is deliberately intended to mislead As Facciiani explains, in his book Misguided Misinformation includes both intentionally and unintentionally false information It's put out there on purpose or it just so happens to be not If you have a belief based on such inaccurate information That would be considered a misperception And as he puts it, If someone were to say, believe that walking backwards, cures the common cold That would be a misperception That's a belief that is not supported by the evidence That's someone who for some reason is misinformed It is not the same as being uninformed. uninformed person wouldn't have any beliefs about how to cure the common cold at all. They're just absent of beliefs in this regard In this framework misinformation is therefore big umbrella term under which there are many kinds of misinformation. Pance Thisisinformation in this framework would be intentionally false or misleading information That means the person or people who spread disinformation want the people who are exposed to the misinformation they spread to believe it and they want them to believe it because they have some goal in mind toward which the belief in things the spreaders know are false serve some propaganda. in this framework is a form of disinformation Uually proropaganda is used to change attitudes via Changing beliefs V misinformation if you Want to shift public opinion from negative to positive or positive to negative. You can do so by identifying an area in which people may be uninformed then you can misinform them And then once they are misinformed, they will own their own generate positive or negative emotional reactions to the issue for which their false beliefs now provide them with an inaccurate model about some concept or event or institution or person or political party or so on Pence Someone who does not live in a major metropolitan area, who has never visited one They might be uninformed aboutb the rate of crime in major cities. s be that crime rates have been going down for a long time currently at a fifty year low they don't know that So a nefarious actor might spread disinformation about high crime rates in major cities for the sake of misinforming uninformed And now the Misinformed will generate negative attitudes about the safety and overall civic health of cities They've never visited in person You can then manipulate people's deeper beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors by suggesting actions, laws, and blame those attitudes Well now support. And that's not just some hypothetical, this is how it work. If people No This has been done a lot There is a long history of propaganda all of civilization especially during sort of the radio into television era. where it became much easier to spread that sort of thing and get a lot more bang for your buck Propaganda. It's a thing that happens, still happens right now. It's happening today. It's happening wherever there is a device where you can look at things that tell you how things might be working around you It's a real thing. And There's a wide array of this sort of stuff. There's another kind of misinformation that's rarely mentioned in the literature they call it Mid information And that's when no one really knows exactly what the truth is yet either concerning a science fact or a historical incident or some sort of evolving situation As Faciani points out, this was the case during the Middle Ages before the development of germ theory. Back then, most medical experts believed miasma or Bad air was the true cause of the bubonic plag They didn't know was that it was actually being spread through direct contact with individuals. So in this case, it wasn't what they didn't know that got them in trouble so much as what they thought they knew for sure because they took actions to avoid bad air all the time. But they did not take measures to avoid direct contact So this has been with us forever Misinformation in some form or another is part of the human experience It' been part of our information exchange for a long, long time. It's just now The information economy is much more complex and misinformation, disinformation propaganda and so on, it's much easier to spread and share at scale. And if that bothers you, you are not alone A recent Pew Research Center poll found that seventy percent of people polled across nineteen countries said the spread of false information online is a quote major threat polling people just inside the United States. eighty four percent of people said they believed misinformation was a quote Very big P probleblem. Today But here's the thing Fallout an impact of misinformation, it's not inevitable We actually understand scientifically how all of this works and we understand it quite well We've been researching this for a long while and we know how to fight against it. And that's what we're going to talk about. in this episode. That is what we're going to discuss with sociologist Matthew Facciiani rightight after this Experience the World Cup at Jersey Fan Hub, New Jersey's home for soccer, music and culture during the tournament. Join thousands of fans at Sports Illustrated Stadium for matchwatch parties on a giant screen from an on the field view, plus entertainment, giveaways and family friendly activations. Best of all, admission is free on most dates. Reserve your free tickets today at NYnjfwc twenty six dot com slash jersey That's NYNJfwcw six d. com slash jersey It only happens every four years, and this time, it's here, the biggest tournament in the world Stadium shaking, flags waving. this is history. you want to be there. But real life can make it tough, work, busy schedules, and the price That's where Priceline comes in. Priceline has millions of deals on flights, hotels, and rental cars so you can go see it live. So find a great deal and make the trip happen. Rally the crew, go see the game live, turn your dream trip into reality. Book now with Priceline. The schoolool of thoughtought I love this place. I've been a fan of the School of thoughtought for years It's a nonpfit organization They provide free, creative commons, critical thinking resources to more than thirty million people worldwide. And their mission is to help popularize critical thinking, reason, media literacy, scientific literacy, and a desire to understand things deeply via intellectual humility So you can see why I would totally be into something like this. The founders of the School of thoughtought have just launched something new called Kitted. Thinking tools. K I T T ED Thinking tools And the way this works is you go to the website, you pick out the kit that you want There's tons of them. and chool Vot will send you a kit of very nice, beautifully designed, well curated, high quality, each one about double the size of a playing card Matte cello four hundred GSM stock prompt cards Nice magnetically latching box that you can use to facilitate workshops. Level up brainstorming and creative thinking sessions, optimize user and customer experience and design, elevate strategic planning and decision making, mitigate risks and liabilities, and Much, much more. And each kit can, if you want to use it this way, interact with this crazy cool app Each card has a corresponding digital version with examples and templates and videos and step by step instructions and more You even get PowerPoint and keynote templates There's so many ways you could use this. Here's some ideas. If you're a venture capital investor, you could get the investor's crritical thinking kit and use it to stress test and evaluate different startups for series A funding If you're a user experience designer, you can get the user design kit to put together a workshop with internal stakeholders for a software product. or if you're an HR professional, you could mix and match these kits to create a complete professional development learning program tailored specifically for your team over the course of the next two years If you're the kind of person who is fascinated with critical thinking and motivated reasoning and intellectual humility and biases, fallacies and heuristics You know, are the sort of person who listens to podcasts like you are not so smart probably the kind of person who would love these decks If you're curious, You can get a special percent. A offer That's right offer right here, you can get half off of one of these kits by heading to kided D. shop KI T T ED . shop and using the code smmart fifty at checkout. That's smart five zero and checkout. F percent of the profits will go back to the schoolool of thought. so you're supporting a good cause that distributes free critical thinking tools all over the world. on top. of receiving a set of thinking superpowers in a box Check all of this out Kided . shop or just click the link in the show not. And now we return to our program My name is David McRey. This is the You are Not So Smart podcast. and our guest in this episode is sociologist Matthew Faciani And who is that Matthew will tell you. So I am a social scientist who studies why people believe the things that they do I've been working at the University of Notre Dame for the last few years and their computer science department where we've been studying How to teach media and digital literacy in a way that's scalable and engaging You wrote a book about all of this and I think the title is important misguided is a good term that I will use and I will cite you when I use it because What I often see in discourse about all this Y to assume that if people are behaving in ways that you disagree with or they believe things you disagree with U that they're stupid or that they are rudes than they have been because of the s they're stupid in rooms and it The framing of they've been misguided is a different frame when you get down into the scalpel version of this U So let me ask that as a question are people who fall for misinformation Matt, the expert on this topic. Are people who fall for misinformation stupid T give a yes, no answer, I would say no Um Because there's so many intelligent people that fall for misinformation, it kind of goes against that idea. And my whole point is that we're all vulnerable to this process because we're social creatures, we're motivated by Pase U these social motivations to belong in our groups and to have community And I start out the book and often use this example outside my book, but the idea of like flat earthers and how there was this really great documentary behind the curve that came out a few years ago It really dives into this very beautifully. They talk about the community and the social aspects of people who believe the Eth is flat. and Hs use conferences and friendships that develop and this community around that. And I think that's so critical to understand the community component. because it provides us with so much self esteem and makes us feel supported within ourselves. So I think when we think about like why someone might believe something false. Even something as extreme as the Earth being flat That belief by itself may not have a big impact or any impact on their day to day life So whether the Eth is hexagon or square or spherical, It's really not changing their day to day life. but what definitely impacts their day to day life is if they lose all their friends and people they care about and their community So from that perspective, it's actually pretty rational to uphold this belief and say, I'm going to continue believing what my friends and close connections believe because I want to maintain that community. and these people care about me. I care about them And this belief is part of a larger set of beliefs that kind of holds us together and we can connect with each other So To me, it is very rational from a psychological perspective to maintain a variety of beliefs, some of which may be false. And that speaks to my larger point about the book Misguided Misguided is something that happens to all of us. It's a process of being guided by social forces that provide us with self esteem and meaning and reductions of uncertainty So we have this strong motivation to protect our identities and our groups that provide us with this meaning and self esteem. So a lot of times it can be very positive. We're guided towards being a good parent because we care about our children. likeike that's an identity process. or you know, we want to do well on our sports team because we care about the sports team that we belong to But when we belong to a political team, for example sometometimes that support of that political identity and that support of the political team might mean rejecting certain facts that make the political team look bad. And that's where we run into these issues with people having this motivation to protect that identity so strongly that they will reject information and believe falsehoods sometimes. so That's kind of like the larger issue of identities and then it gets, you know, more complicated as you dive into like the context to which these identity forces are most impactful They're get it in a second, but I I just I love how surprising this can seem to the uninitiated because you're doing it all day every day and we've been doing it all day every day for the entirety of human civilization Yeah And yet this can still seem quite surprising Yeah, I've Ielt I felt similarly. I mean,, you know I study this stuff every day so like I know other people who don't maybe don't think about it as much and it could be a lot more novel And But I think it's even broader and deeper than that. Because whenever you're learning about these social biases, that, okay, we have this motivation to protect important identities And we have this motivation to protect identities and meanings that bond us with our communities. The broader message is that We're actually motivated by these forces that we're not always aware of or thinking about And human beings like to believe that we're very rational and logical and we're making decisions completely by logic and reason and we're just in control driving how we believe things and how we come to different conclusions But the reality is much more complex in that we have a lot less control than we might think. And we might be very biased by our environments and the social and psychological forces behind that So I think some of that requires awareness and this broader intellectual humility that Yes, we can be biased and yes, there are forces that we might not even know about And Appreciating that makes us less biased. So it's kind of it's kind of interesting whenever someone is trying to say like, no,, you know, I know the classic example is like someone who is very convinced they are unbiased. but thought process of really stridently thinking you're unbiased. ironically makes you more biased because you're not open to the idea that you could be wrong. so you're just following this very narrow track in your mind that allows you to believe various falsehoods, even though you think you're not What comes up a lot of these discussions, I find is the information deficit models what comes up because it just seems like if you just saw the things I saw If you've just been exposed, especially in academia, if you were just exposed to the information that I've been exposed to and just acknowledge that I am an expert on this topic, And so therefore, take a look at this information that I have provided for you then you'll look at that go, o, okay, I was wrking about that and and It seems to me there's an element of This group is trusting one source of information and this group is trusting a different source of information as a question What would you suppose is the difference between a person who believes the Eth is round and a person who believe E earth this flat when it comes to who they're trusting Yeah, I mean's Altering that Differe trust basaces Trust is such a critical component and it's also another very social U Another social type of thing here because It's comprised of how you feel about the person and how competent you are, you think they are. So , you know, it's interesting to think about trust in the form of experts because so much of how we determine if someone's trustworthy or not is not just like a very technical aspect of how competent they are at like certain problem solving. It's not like we're just like viewing all their test scores or something and saying, okay, this person's competent or not A huge chunk of trust is warmth is How Do you believe that this person has your best interests in mind And that component is a huge predictor of whether or not we trust someone So if you donon't know any scientists personally or any physicians personally then you might have less interactions with them and it might be more you might be more easy to believe that they're not having your best interests in mind and they might be corrupted somehow You know, as far of the flat earth thing, it's like, okay, imagine you have this contrarian frehinker influencer that you like to follow who is always in your phone in your hand every day talking to you directly, sometimes responding to your comments And you have this like connection with them. It might be a parocial connection, but it's still a social connection with this person And you believe that they have your best interests in mind. They're constantly affirming identities and questions that you have So you trust them and they might think that their earth is flat Or they're presenting that view to you and maybe they're showing some of their work in a technical looking way And you trust that because of the social connection you have with them And you can compare that to This faceless abstract scientific institution that releases a statement on their website and says, you know, the Earth is round Well, like from a psychological perspective Which one of those pieces of information are you more likely to trust? the person that you have this ongoing social contract with or this Faceless, abstract, non human entity of just this like big science group that you know, you're supposed to distrust And I think that really speaks to how we form trust and then what that looks like in practice and how a lot of these institutions have been super slow to adapt to the current media landscape and I have been so cautious to have dialogue with people that now we're seeing the negative effects of that. where We need people like going on podcasts and having dialogue with people on social media from these institutions, whether it's academic institutions or medical institutions, science institutions because people want to see that level of sociality that that that social relationship And if you don't have that, then you're already being reduced so much in the components that determine if you're trustworthy sts a vacuum for someone else to come and be like, Hey, that person's not even talking to you Or when they do talk to you, it's a very patronizing, like top down type of process. So instead, trust me And I will talk to you and I'll give you access and know answer all your questions directly. So you were seeing that asymmetry between these institutions that didn't value science outreach enough and all of these influencers who are all about outreach and connecting with their communities how that asymmetry and trust can form from that perspective Mm . You talk about this in the book like There's a question of how much of this has always been the case and how much of this is new, especially when it comes to the polarization and Yeah You know, you go from There's a maniac in the street yelling like crazy things in your small village and you know that person and everybody knows who that is. And then you switches to Every maniac that has access to the interternet is now yelling and it alters like the signal to noise ratio and what goes the top. then you've got newspapers, then radio, then television, the internet. Every single one of those changes the information economy and the attention economy. and And then what gets incentivized and what everybody's consciously or unconsciously A be testing all of that And going with what works, especially if you make a living off of it No. Cable news started having, you know, punditry that was angry is that like like in my from my perspective, it's like acccuracy was never what was connecting you to the person. It was They were angry at the same things you were angry at. Exactly That's the issue that's at stake. That's what's actually the motivation even When you're arguing with your family member, like you' What you want them to do is come over to your side so it's no longer in us versus them situation. the actual topic is almost irrelevant. just I just want you on my side. So that you' motivated by the same things I'm motivated by and you're angry at the same things I'm angry by And then the landscape just adapted to it. So that's what you do up front is portray your anger and portray your versus dimbness and everything sorts. That seems newer or at least to how quickly the economy can adapt to that is faster And now I think I'm on the right track there, right Yeah, absolutely. I think the The psychological biases that we've been talking about have been around since humans have been around What is different now is the speed and the scalability of enacting those biases. I mean, social media makes it instant Whereas before you'd have to have like a group of people actually meet them in person and have conversations. And it gets really messy And I think that's kind of another interesting distinction of Before whenever you would try to bring up politics or something Like you might, if you were embedded within your local community And you were like going to community events and interacting with lots of different people There is You knew you had to have future encounters with these people. So you had to treat them with respect and you know mutual respect and understand that they're full humans with their complex ideas just like you But with the age of the interternet and social media, you can self select people who think almost exactly like you and affirm your identities and your ideologies and make the world much uh cleaner These are all the good guys on my side who agree with me one hundred percent And everyone else who's disagreeing with me is on the bad side And It just makes it so simple and so quick And algorithms amplify that and keep showing you stuff that you like and you interact with. and AI makes that even more personalized. L we're just like streamlining these psychological biases to make them more impactful So it's not so much that like social media itself is creating polarization. It's just making these existing social psychological biases much easier to be introduced to us and then amplified and reinforced as we interact with them I think this is one of the things that is most difficult for like a Especially in the United States culture, but just Western culture in Jeru. You want to think that People are being misled and they're being tricked And the battle is like to fight the agents who are brainwashing people Had There's a less emphasis on a person is actively choosing to engage or disengage with certain sources and information and the idea that there would be any responsibility involved is thing to introduce to the conversation for a lot of people. I wonder what your thoughts are on that Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting. Yeah. I think both this is something that like both sides of the political spectrum will say. It's like the other side is just brainwashed. their're NPCs or whatever Um And I think that's that's an interesting idea of itself because like what does that say about how you view other people Do you view other people as just these easy to lead and mislead peopleeople but like you're not part of that. So it's like you're like very much othering this group of people that it's like you're assuming they have completely different psychological All processes than you do. And that's just not true. Like we're all human beings, we all have these social psychological biases. Again, that's like my main point is like we all have these and we're all vulnerable to it And it's important to understand what context and what situations make these biases more impactful. So Yeah, I think it's a It's an easy way to just As scribe. Um a simple explanation to something, especially if we don't like the outcome. Um it kind of goes into like you know, just world hypothesis stuff and thinking about like neat, simple solutions of Well, you know, my dad, I want to believe my dad is good. And what he's believing is something I consider not good. So there must be this external thing that's driving that And instead of like under diving into the complex interplay of environment and social influence and how we all of these biases I'll just reiterating things in a way, but I find that to be No One of the things that the most knee jerk response to is this other ring that you're describing The because there's just so much research into well, people actively avoid certain types of information. You do that enough and But it was just newspapers or books. There's that's one 's some sort of impact there. but when it' as you're describing it constant from the almost if especially if you wake up and you begin doom scrolling within, you know, thir seconds of entering consonscious reality again, like L like, yeah You're doing a lot of work to stay inside your mobile Right. And a lot of people are helping you do that more and more and almost making it as easy as ordering room service, but it's, you know, it's a the effort you have to put into doing the thing that you're going to do, they're making it so easy you get from here to there U I can talk about that forever, and I'll burn all our time, talk about that because I find that particularly vascic right now identity. That's a word that that is in the common parlands, but an actual social scientist, a cognitive researcher has a much more robust understanding of the term identity So let's just start there. from a scientific perspective, what do we talk about when we talk about identity Yeah, great question. So from a social science perspective, how I can go other peopleeople have different ident different definitions of identity. So that's a whole other conversation of like the nuance there. But broadly speaking from a social psychological perspective An identity is defined as a set of meanings that Uh allow us to Iidentify with a role or a social group or a unique characteristic that defines us as like a unique person So the set of meanings is really how we're thinking about it. So what does that mean? And like how do we define those meanings and how do we measure them? You know we can ask people, we can try to track how they interact with different things But really thinking about identities as meanings and values that we want to adhere to And why that matters is because once we know that there's these important important identities and then associated with these important values and meanings We then know that people have this motivation to protect those identities by acting in ways that are consistent with those meanings and values And when people act in ways that are consistent with these meanings and values, it provides them a source of self esteem. So there's this constant motivation to maintain consistencies between behaviors that we do the information that we process and the meanings and values associated with those important identities, because they provide us with this feedback loop of self esteem So for example Let's say you're a student and you care about being a good student, that's an important identity for you. There's roles associated with that. Ididentity. such as studying And going to class and whenver you're studying and going to class and then you're getting good grades, that provides you a self esteem boost because you care about that. And it it allows you to verify that identity in your mind in a way that keeps giving you this positive feedback loop. So you want to keep studying, getting good grades, being a good student, and so on and so forth So that's like the positive aspects of identities. And not only do we have this feedback loop with self esteem Identities also allow us to connect with other people who share characteristics with us so we can form bonds and provide all this social support. and communities. So there's all these positives that go along with identities. like this constant verification of the meanings and the values of these identities make us feel good. So we're constantly motivated to do that. As we've been describing, Whenever we have this motivation to protect those identities and act in ways that are consistent with those meanings Sometimes it means rejecting facts and rejecting reality in a way that's adhering to these falsehoods because what matters more is protecting those identities, protecting that source of self esteem, and protecting the communities associated with those identities we belong to And that's where we see issues of vulnerability to misinformation. We like to think of our identity as something that just is. was this is why I I either was born with this identity or I chose it from the Tiply of options. The fact that I was influenced to consider this identity important to me is something we get prickly about because it feels like I have no agency involved. Agency is a key word there. and I think that's one of the challenges with having these types of conversations We have to acknowledge that we have less agency than we might think And that's an uncomfortable truth to try to present with people You talk about like a meta discussion of identity. Yeah. identity is It feels like it's synonymous with agency, but it's not. Race Yeah, it's a psychological process. Like we're measuring psychological bias in the a form of social influence through identities And when we have these identities they do happen sometimes randomly, you know, L like college is a good example because like you're meeting lots of different people and like you're kind of growing up and becoming who you are And that could your identities could be formed by just who you interact with, who you have class with, Like if you're just walking through campus And this kid comes up to you and it's like, Hey, you want to join my club And let's say it's a religious club and he seems really nice and then Um you become religious ultimately because of that interaction, or maybe become non religious if it's like an atheist club So it's like you might not even think that that was the thing that pushed you But when you think of like the preponderance of your social interactions We're motivated again to be these social creatures and have social support from people we care about And That can be due to we connect with and that could be a very random process that You know, we don't always like to think about Yeah, which is in itself We may have we could have been born into a culture that was more okay with that Yeah, it's gonna put us so quickly Yeah, just one favorite. And we can have many identities, as you talk about in the book. you can be a parent and a teacher and a musician and ex military and American and from Iowa and a fan of this and you like this and I go to this conference and this convention and I like this TV show. all of these things are multiple aspects,ult identities that can become depending on the context and depending on the other people that share it will have more impact on your cognition and behavior because it sort of rises in the importance of that context, that identity is front and center Um Tell me a little bit and tell everybody in the world a little bit about the difference between identity salience and identity prominence. Yeah, so identity prominence is referring to how personally important the identity is to you And identity salience is more about it's top of mind or not So if something is a salient, you're thinking about it, If something is prominent, it's more of a deeper personal association with that identity Both of those influence our behavior Because if we're reminded about an identity we have, so it's more salient We're also more likely to want to support that identity and act in ways consistent with that identity But if itood If it's an important identity, a prominent identity, we're also motivated to support it. And these are constantly Changing what's top of mind for us is a constant process of like If you remind someone about their identity, then they may be more likely to think about it and then have a motivation to protect it So one of the studies that I mentioned that kind of dives into this is this political identity study where if you have people write about their political identities become more biased. And that's because they're thinking about it more and they're like, oh yeah, you know, I'm a conservative or I'm a liberal. and now that I'm thinking about this, I'm going to respond to even having stronger political attitudes than the group of people in the study that you don't ask to think about your political identity. So it's becoming more salient in their mind, it's more top of mind, and it was already important to them for many of that. So both of those concepts explain How motivated we are to protect these identities when we're consciously thinking about them or unconsciously thinking about them if it's a deeper, broader personal importance, like with prominence You did research into this effic control thing where people heard a story. share a little bit if you could about the research you did into the Fect control theory Yeah, so afterff a control theory talks more about how we feel towards cultural ideas and how we think about different components of language. So you mentioned language so you might find this this interesting because what we're actually doing is evaluating each word on three dimensions of meaning Um Like evaluation, potency and activity. So evaluation, good bad, potency, strong weak and activity like really active or more passive and slow And there's been a lot of research on showing that these three dimensions of meaning really break down a lot of concepts just with those three factors Yeah, so this is like part of my dissertation work. So it's been a few years since I've really dove into this. But I remember it being such a cool way to try to quantify how we navigate our social and cultural worlds Because whenever we experience the world in a way that contrasts from what we expect It creates this like sense of unreality and this kind of like uh response and we're motivated to try to fix that in some way. So For example, I think this is an example I provide in my book Um We one way to study this is through like really short statements and One statement is I think like mother hurts child So you break down each of those components even more specifically, like mother, we think more positively for as a culture So this word in this concept, you think, okay, mother, good Hurt is a bad thing So a bad action, a strong action And then child, we think good. So it creates this cultural inconsistency and this psychological inconsistency for us to Read that sentence of like mother hurts child. We think, ohh, like something We then are like motivated to reframe one part of that sentence. So maybe the mother we think is a bad person. We say like, oh, this is actually like more of a monster, not a mother or hurt. mayaybe we're saying, oh, maybe hurt is just they're disciplining them. They're not actually hurting them So like we're trying to reframe this constantly in our mind to try to make sense of the world And I think that's an interesting way to think about how we like process identities and biases on a very granular detailed level. It's like even at the level of each word, We're trying to make sense of it And we are rejecting these inconsistencies whenever we see them even at a very lower level Soo connected to politics, which is like the easy political identity to fit in here If we're a Republican or a Democrat and we read a story about like Democrat hurts person, If we're a Democrat we read that, we're like, oh well, We're less likely to think that's true But if we're a Republican or we read that same sentence, we're more likely to think that's true. because the Republicans are evaluating the word Democrat very differently than Democrats are So you can really like quantify at a very simple mathematical level how How much conflict? peopleeople are going to perceive these statements based on their own identities And that's what I was trying to study in my dissertation is really breaking down these political attitudes at this like synapactical level of Okay, Democrats and Republicans are going to evaluate each other differently And that also means that they're going to evaluate the likelihood of events differently based on how they are evaluating different words. So like Democrats and Republicans, I think in my dissertation, I did use the example Democrat hurts person, Republican hurts person. So Democrats and Republicans evaluated the words hurt and person pretty similarly But they evaluated Democrat and Republican very differently And you can do this mathematical equation of seeing how much conflict there is between The words in that particular sequence. So A Democrat reading the sentence, Democrat hurts person creates a lot of conflict or what's called in the literature deflection. because You're saying good word is doing bad things And that's this big conflict in your mind Whereas Republicans, it creates a lot less deflection and less conflict in their mind because that is more similar to their expectations based on their identities. And so we can kind of like mathematically operationalize How much psychological conflict are people experiencing when they read these short sentences And then you can expand that to like a broader way of how they view their worlds where All right, so right from the beginning, we're seeing that This person is going to consider this social situation much more or less likely, depending on the identities that they have And that likelihood is really what I'm driving at. is like, how likely do you think this event is and that likelihood is dependent on how you evaluate each component of the social situation So again If you're viewing the actor in this situation good or bad, you're going to view the subsequent behaviors of that actor differently So it's kind of speaking to this broader identity bias, but it's really diving into the details of like, okay, here are the nuts and bolts of where it starts. And you can see these like building blocks of identity bias based on how people just evaluate certain words and certain Doors Allright They experience you know in their environments Somet something you broughte up I I I think it was Mason who had brought this up. I've noticed this and it's a strange thing. I'm wondering You you have any insights into this or just any curiosity about it It seems to be in my lifetime, and I could be wrong about this and maybe this has happened all throughout history I just happen to be in a pocket of it where's happening now Being in American culture, being a Democrat or being a Republican has become this super orordinate identity No And you can say left versus right, but it seems like This if this becomes salient, this becomes the thing land So meega identity as she was describing it. This feels at least in my lifetime, it feels strronger than ever But I'm wondering if you have any insights as to how did that come about? How did Why is that now our super ordinate identity across all sorts of context Yeah, I think there's a variety of reasons for this One thing has just been how you could talk of like the macro level of how Political discussion from political leaders has changed has become much more adversarial in just the past few decades. So you can see this like top down effect of People becoming much more aggressive towards their opponents, you know considering their opponents as the enemy more versus just someone they disagree with And we saw that you know in the nineties with like New Kingrich and stuff like that. where the language used was just very different And so that's like the macro level. But then there's also the personal level and the environment we are in now is very different than it used to be. So we talked about social media. Social media is amplifying this existing process. So you already have these social biases, these social identities, and these networks that amplify these identities But now you can find your own cable channel. that supports your political identity, whereereas before, there wasn't like a personal cable channel that it was more of a broad channel that applies to everyone So now it can be personalized with one identity of the other but not just cable identities like it was in the nineties and early two thousands. Now we're seeing social media. You can have your very personalized social media information that will support your identity and tell you the other identity is bad So it's this amplification process. And that's really the major vulnerability that I see with these identity processes. It's not so much that we have these identities that bias us. likeike, yes, we should be mindful of these identity biases. whereere it really becomes a problem is the spaces where it's reinforced to be this super ordinate identity like you speak of or this mega identity. And what context and situations allow for that to happen? So An sort of amplification process is going to make us more vulnerable to these identity processes. And that could be surrounding ourselves with people who think just like us and are constantly reinforcing our identities and our beliefs and our meanings associated with those identities. So again, that could be like a cable news show, you watch it. And it's constantly affirming that. But then it's not just cable news, it's your social networks, it's your social media. And it's constantly amplifying these existing forces to create such a strong polarization that connects other identities together and That can be because when We are navigating our world. We want to associate with people who are like us and share our characteristics. And when politics is such a driving force of who we are, we want to be around people who think similarly to us This can be an issue when we are so motivated to be around people that we share characteristics with. that we stop associating with people who think differently than us or have different backgrounds And this relates to this idea in this research topic that I talk in a book of this social psychological concept of social identity complexity And that's a really interesting way to think about identities. So it's not just that we have these identities that exist in vacuums, but our identities operate in a context of intersecting with other identities. And how does that influence us? So if we have, let's say, our political and religious identity, How much overlap do those two identities have if they have Um compleomplete overlap this is an extreme example. Let's say we have like, four really important identities in our lives, which is, you know, just an extreme example Let's see our political identity, our religious identity, our volunteer identity and our friend identity. So this is who we are So let's pretend that our religious and political identity completely overlap. All the meanings are one hundred percent agreement And we volunteer at our place of worship. So we are there. We care about v being a volunteer. It's also connected to this. And all of our friends are also at this place of worship. and also share our political beliefs Th in this example, one hundred percent of how we derive our social self esteem is based on this very narrow lens of meanings that are all within this four identities that completely overlap. completely amplify and increase the prominence of these identities. So it's not just that these are personally important to us, but they share meanings with other personally important identities that then enhances the overall importance of those meanings So one hundred percent of how we view ourselves is through this these these few meanings associated with these identities. So any information that challenges those identities challenges one hundred percent of where we derive our self esteem from. So it's a super strong personal attack. that makes us motivated to reject it because it feels very very uncomfortable, very, very negative You could think of the converse of that, where we have a much broader set of identities that do not overlap very much. So we can still have a political and religious identity, but let's say they're not over connected all that much. Our church doesn't even really talk about politics all that much And let's say we volunteer, but we volunteer at like a pet shelter, something completely outside our church And we have friends that Maybe a few go to our church, but we have a lot of friends who don't go to our church. so our friend identity is much broader. Now our meanings associated with our identities are spread across a wide range of social support systems So whenever we encounter information that challenges our political identity, it's only a small subset of where we're deriving self esteem from And we're much better able to absorb it and process it more objectively because it's not completely attacking our entire sense of self, but only a small component of it. And that's how we're more resilient towards misinformation if we're experiencing information that is false that challenges these identities That's awesome m I'm going to make a new slide for my next thing I'm going to present to talk about this It would take a long time to get here on your own, but once you see it, it's like Yeah. you kind of have to build it up. Yeah. But like once you get it, then you can just see it. Like I now like I literally try to see like what I visualize this. You can write it down on like a map And some people have talked about like how that could help reduce polarization by actually like visualizing your identities on a piece of paper But like you can see how this all connects because we have our identities and our identity maps and how much overlap they have spatially And then you can see the network effects of all those identities amplifying them. And then if you really get really crazy and granular, you can think about that affect control theory and how we view social situations based on evaluations of specific words and actions and how that is all interacting with each other and potentially amplifying our susceptibility to misinformation and bias. So it's like it gets really complicated, but that in that complexity, you can really start to understand the broad effect of how we're vulnerable to these social biases and what we can do about it. Yeah. I'm imagining a all throughout our history different types of ways of being civilized you know, villages, communities, empires how that alters the way your identities get a chance to be overlapped just because of the practicality of the situation and the geographical limitations. And you don't have media source. you don't even have literacy yet. like you It's a My politics and my religion and friends and my volunteers So I was smoohed up And it make ms that when you meet He certainly When thisroup suddenly meets the Romans, you know, like, oh wow, there's not a whole lot of overlap here. Exactly. Yeah. so it's wild to think about how much we can like visualize these processes happening. And it makes a lot of sense of how strong and quickly that othering can be when it's not just, okay, it's one identity. it's this confluence All these identities that amplify each other And that's really where that polarization stems from This is good stuff. Okay. but I do want to get one last thing and sure, which is And this is a question that it would take two hours for you to answer. so I understand that are In these discussions, no matter who you're talking to, if you're talking to someone who seems like an expert, the question is, okay, well what do we do about this? becausecause it seems like we're L with the train's headed for the cliff Oh ye what options are available according to the research we've done seemes actually has a can have some positive impact on all of this It's just an inevitable outcome of what happens when societies get complex? O do we have options here? And I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that. Yeah, so it is a big question and yeah, it will take several hours to really dive into it. But to try to summarize it Um What I've been referring to is like the particular vulnerability of are susceptibible to misinformation. So when are we most susceptible to misinformation from a social science perspective My point is that happens under contexts where our identity biases are amplified. and reinforced. So in order to reduce. that vulnerability, we need to reduce that re reinforcement and amplification process And that's kind of like a good starting point of like, okay, well, now we actually are defining stuff. So it's like, okay, so where these vulnerabilities take place. One is, you know, social media is an easy one because you can kind of visualize it. and I think we have an idea of what that looks like Whenateever we' in these hyper echo chambers on social media, it provides a way to amplify reinforce these identities So trying to break out of that would be one way. like trying to not doomcroll and constantly obsess over whatever your particular political ideology is, trying to break out of that. And you know, I think people are aware of this. like the whole idea of like touch grass. like that's a common thing. Like people know like, yes, sometimes it's good to the log off and meet people in the real world. And it sounds so simple and obvious, but it's true. Like literally just getting outside social media, outside whatever these these you know, these screens or How are you receiving these this online information It's important to Take a break and not allow yourself to become radicalized through this reinforcement process that will take advantage and exploit these identity processes that we've been describing So actually like meeting lots of different people Again, it seems so obvious and simple, but I think it's a really important component to improve our of resilience to misinformation, we need to expand our diversity of identities and what that could look like is simply Volunteering at different places, you know, getting a new hobby, meeting different people and joining a sports league So again, it's like it seems silly, but there's so much power in literally like joining a local sports league and meeting people from all different backgrounds. So that's why I really enjoy sports because one, it's like good physical exercise and good for your mental health But also it' good for like your social health. Like just meeting lots of different people and being active and thinking about how There's a variety of people out here from different perspectives that you might otherwise not have a chance to meet So personally, we can On an individual level, we can try to expand our identity maps and do different things, meet different people, and not have our identities so wrapped up in a narrow set of meanetings. So we can individually, we can do that Now the issue is like, what does that look like on a societal level And we don't always have opportunities to do that. So in the United States, we don't have a lot of what's called third spaces where you know, we have our home, we have our work. but there's not really a lot of good community spaces where we can meet lots of different people So that's kind of the tricky part is like, how do we like fund initiatives for more people to do this? Um, you know that requires like a whole structural kind of bigger picture thing, but there are opportunities still for people to join sports leagues or volunteer with different things, you know, meet people at their local libraries and stuff. So like there are like publicly available things like that So that's one part. I think is like diversifying ourselves, diversifying our identities, diversifying our networks And then there's the education component, which is what I've been working on the last few years. It's like not only do we have to be aware of our social biases and work on that But that should be merged with this idea of becoming as media literate as we can Like how do we learn how to navigate our media and information landscape as best we can And that speaks to some of the work that I've been doing at Notre Dame, developing these short media literacy games that teaches people different aspects of verifying the credibility of sources, for example what's called lateral reading often, where instead of looking within an article and trying to fact check it within the confines of that article, you're going laterally and opening new tabs and seeing who the author is, what their biases might be, what outlet are they writing for, and what journalistic practices does that particular media outlet have It's like learning those skills is also really important. And in the age of AI, I think that connects to digital literacy, learning the limitations of artificial intelligence in these large language models, these chatbots. So like there's that whole education component too. But The education component, I would argue, can only go so far. You have to have that social understanding as well and that awareness of your own social biases because that allows you to combine the best of both of those techniques where it's like, okay, now I know how to fact check And I'm aware of my social biases. So I'm not just fact checking stuff that's inconvenient or convenient for me So that's on the individual level is like trying to understand how we can Learn about our biases, leararn how to fact check better and how to navigate the internet So that's individually. but then I can also go into like the meso and macro as well because I think that's also important. So I dive into this in my book about The meso level of basasically communities and what that looks like. So we've talked about trust and how trust is a social process of how we trust someone when they think they're competent And we think they have our best interests in mind. So that might require forming relationships with someone So what I would like to see happen is more of these scientific and medical institutions that have lost some trust actually go out in their communities and form relationships again with their local communities or on social media, like actually invest in this and have people speaking about What is the importance of a university? What are they actually doing? What research are they doing that makes a difference in your life? And that reduces this psychological distance between people who are not familiar with universities. and and the universities themselves So you know, I often think like I'm within academia. I know a lot of scientists and physicians. So for me, it's a lot easier for me to trust them because I know them personally But if you don't personally know these people then Stits a barrier and it creates an opportunity for someone else to be like, Hey, don't trust those people. You don't even know them. Trust me instead And I think If more opportunities existed for partnerships between local community leaders and their hospitals and universities and really invest in those partnerships at a local level and then scale that throughout the United States. Like that's my big picture. if I could wave a magic wand I would have these hospitals and universities have resources to invest in those community outreach programs And then of course, there's like big, big picture of like thinking about social media and what they can do a better job on. And that gets really tricky because it requires regulation. But I mean, some simple things are just like having these companies u share their data more and have more transparency And that's something unfortunately that we've kind of drifted away from because ideally, we'd have independent researchers studying these platforms and having access to their data so we can actually really know what these algorithms are doing and how they're affecting us So that's that's a big component of it as well It should be complicated. If you had a simple answer, I'd be like me. That is as simple as I can try to be That is it for this episode of the You Not so Smart podcast for links to everything we talked about Head to you arenaotsosmart. com or check the show notes. there In your podcast, player, My name is David Mcrany. I have been your host In those show notes, you can find my book How Minds Change, wherever they put books on shelves and ship them in trucks details DavidmcRraney. com And