The Third Person Effect

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

i'm subject to the third person effect all the time as well. It's, it's what we call a performance. When an actor says something in character, we don't say by that's really mean. I was thoughti is a really nice guy. Why is you saying that horrible thing? Because it's in the script. Don't know about you, but when i'm, of course, i'm nothing like any of these. No, i'm tot when i go to the grocery store, i like these people in this grocery store. And yet, every once in a while i do notice that i fall victim to it. Ye, it gets me this often than it

To the Founding Fathers it was free libraries. To the 19th century rationalist philosophers it was a system of public schools. Today it's access to the internet. Since its beginnings, Americans have believed that if facts and information were available to all, a democratic utopia would prevail. But missing from these well-intentioned efforts, says author and journalist David McRaney, is the awareness that people's opinions are unrelated to their knowledge and intelligence. In fact, he explains, the better educated we become, the better we are at rationalizing what we already believe. Listen as the author of How Minds Change speaks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about why it's so hard to change someone's mind, the best way to make it happen (if you absolutely must), and why teens are hard-wired not to take good advice from older people even if they are actually wiser.