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Why Do You Keep Lying About It?

by joe golfer
6 replies
No matter how many times you say you want original reporting and hard news, you actually read easy listicles. Here's why:

Why Audiences Hate Hard News—and Love Pretending Otherwise - Derek Thompson - The Atlantic

Interesting, right? Liberals like a liberal slant because it is "easier." Same with conservatives. People want things easy. Analyzing and weighing hard news is hard, so we skip it.

Consider that when creating your next product or writing the sales copy for it. Trying to change people, or educate them, because you feel your methods are what they "should" follow, is a tough road to go down.
#lying
  • Profile picture of the author RogozRazvan
    Why do nice girls say that they won't sleep with you in the first night?

    There is a difference between what people say and what people do.

    Thanks for the article, great resource.
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  • Profile picture of the author blindapeseo
    The human brain loves litltle snippets of news and information.

    This is why those things are as exciting and successful as they are.
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    • Profile picture of the author Memetics
      If you want to change a belief then take a belief someone already has and attach part of the new belief to it and introduce it to the reader. Think of your belief as being a virus with its own protein coat, the readers critical factor is their immune system, it recognises the foreign belief as alien and attacks it before it can gain access to your unconscious mind where your own beliefs live.

      However, if you coat your virus (belief) with a bit of the readers own protein coat (their belief) it can sneak in under the radar and into the unconscious where it links to other beliefs and in doing so influences them.

      Do this enough times and all the pieces of your own belief can assemble in their mind and change how they think about things.

      Sometimes the readers belief can be so strong though that it will reject anything you try to attach to it. Luckily though nature has provided us with some prewired beliefs called cognitive bias that we all carry in our mind and we can use these as our vehicles instead to out outflank the resistance.

      List of cognitive biases - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

      Anyone of these, to some extent, can be linked to your belief and introduced to the reader as being pre-approved by their own mind. People don't like having their beliefs challenged and they defend them vigorously (see "the backfire effect" in the above link) as the brain makes it uncomfortable for them to do anything else. Think of the discomfort or cognitive dissonance as being the brains "bootcamp" for new beliefs, only the toughest get through.

      "associative linkage" is a way of missing the bootcamp all together and going straight to the passing out parade.

      Stage one: Question the belief slightly in a curiosity frame.

      Stage Two: Once they have dissonance give them a way out with a nice cognitive bias.

      Stage three: They accept the way out to end the discomfort.

      Did I mention stage 2 and a half? No..? well dear reader that's attach a part of your own belief to its coat tails, nobody ever notices. Do it a few times till you have the bits of the jigsaw altogether in their mind and their unconscious reassembles them into a nice new belief.

      Then again you could always just generate some emotion in your copy, that bypasses the critical factor altogether.
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      First we believe.....then we consider.

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      • Profile picture of the author LinsaySmith
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        • Profile picture of the author Memetics
          Opinions are the conscious mind's rationalisation of their own beliefs and a way of spreading these beliefs to others, you're putting the cart before the horse.

          The example you give is a good one: The "group pressure" or "public consent" that you state is a belief that it's best to follow the rest of the crowd more often than not; it's one of Cialdini's six principles of persuasion: Social Consensus.

          It works because in the 100,000 years before civilisation it was best to go along with the rest of the tribe or face banishment and the end of your gene line. So nature in her wisdom gave you the belief that it's best to act that way and give that belief the emotional bodyguards of "shame" and "guilt" to protect it (and your genes) it's a pre wired heuristic of the mind.

          Notice I say pre wired and not "hardwired" some people can overcome it and they are the types we call psychopaths who possess a faulty amygdala, from these people came the great advancements in culture and civilisation which define us now. Progress still happened but at a much slower rate without them but all in all it was the changing of beliefs themselves which made it happen.

          I have a belief that if I see an angry pitbull terrier in the street it's best not to go over and stroke it, that belief is protected by the emotion of fear and it protected my ancestors from being killed and so passed that belief onto me as a pre wired heuristic.

          If you asked me "why didn't you go over and stroke it?" I would give you my opinion that it would most likely have bitten me and it would have been an unwise decision, but the source of my decision was a belief it would, and an emotion of fear to back it up.

          Notice the use of the word "decision" Beliefs create decisions and creating decisions (to buy) are our business.
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          First we believe.....then we consider.

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  • Profile picture of the author WhipStrip
    So true. People are very hypocritical.... Usually the biggest complainers are the worst offenders. Nature of the beast I guess?
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  • Profile picture of the author jrigdon73
    News with a political slant is so prevalent these days, its almost hard to remember a time without it. But like every trend -- it only a matter of time before it starts to swing back the other way.
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