A lot of misinformation producers use anxiety and fear in the crafting of their messages. The mind is partly predisposed to want to accept randomness, so one of these tricks is to reinterpret randomness. It's easy to trick the brain into wanting to see that pattern, especially if you wrap that up into a convincing story. Smart manipulators use a grain of truth to get their message out.
In the latest episode of Nature hits the books, psychologist Sander van der Linden joins us to discuss his new book Foolproof, which focuses on misinformation and what can be done to prevent people being duped, particularly by the falsehoods found online.
We discuss how misinformation messages are crafted, why they can be hard to shake once someone is exposed, and how Star Wars: Episode 3 helped in the fight against them…
Foolproof, Sander van der Linden, Fourth Estate (2023)
Music supplied by Airae/Epidemic Sound/Getty images.
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