On conspiracy theories. Is the internet making everything worse ? Not necessarily. They may be an innately psychological problem, not a network problem :
One study that does offer some hints was carried out by political scientists Joseph E Uscinski and Joseph M Parent in 2014. They turned to the letters pages of the The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune from 1890 to 2010, counting letters to the editor that referred to conspiracy theories. While they found spikes, such as in the 1950s during the ‘Red Scare’ when fear of communism was at its peak, the authors did not find that conspiracy theories have become more common – in fact, the level has remained fairly consistent.
This is what we would expect to find, says Brotherton: “Believing in conspiracy theories is, at least in part, a psychological phenomenon. Everyone is on a spectrum: some are more inclined to believe and some are less, and it makes sense that this would stay relatively stable over time.” What has changed in the last decade, however, is that the rapid growth of the internet has made it easier for conspiracy theorists to find each other, says Dr Harry Dyer, a lecturer in education at the University of East Anglia.
And then there are the reasons which cause them, of which this one was new to me :
Then there is proportionality bias, where we assume that if something big happens, such as a terrorist attack or a president being assassinated, something big must have caused it. “President Kennedy was assassinated by a lone gunman who no one had ever heard of, which psychologically does not fit with our intuition,” says Brotherton. So a conspiracy theory develops that it was caused by something bigger: the Mafia, the CIA, the Illuminati.
A 1979 study demonstrated this effect by showing participants fake newspaper articles with two versions of the same story. In one version, an assassination attempt on a president was successful and the president died; in the other, the president survived. When faced with the bigger outcome (the president dying), participants preferred a conspiratorial explanation; when the outcome was less significant, they believed the story of the lone gunman.
And finally, an outstandingly poor choice of metaphor, given the circumstances :
Conspiracy theories seem shot-through with paranoia, and there is evidence to suggest that the more paranoid someone is, the more they tend to believe these theories. But Brotherton points out that studies show that this is not severe, ‘clinical level’ paranoia. “It’s mundane, everyday suspicions that we all have to some extent – not outlandish, tinfoil hat levels of paranoia.”
Sooo... not tinfoil-hat levels of paranoia. That causes you to wear a tinfoil hat. Ummm.... ?
http://bit.ly/2Q6ZbEL
> They may be an innately psychological problem, not a network problem.
ReplyDelete>> Everyone is on a spectrum: some are more inclined to believe and some are less,
If the second statement is true; and the models presented yesterday are reasonable approximations of how ideas propagate and transition from "I've heard of that idea" to "I believe that idea", then we'd expect the "less inclined to believe" group to eventually get subsumed by the "very inclined to believe group". So the idea that increasing the number of connections between people who strongly believe in an idea would have no impact on the belief in the idea would be very surprising.
On the other hand, this could be counterbalanced by the increase in the number of people who you know who believe that the flat earthers are crazy.
Granted, the network model you shared yesterday didn't really go into how new network connections get created, and what counts as a 'connection'.
It may be partially my poor wording. Of course it's probably not a choice of innate/network but more a question of where the balance lies.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how simplified those models were compared to the real deal : I imagine them to be the outreach-friendly ones. I don't think they described strength of belief, but they do mention that groupthink is a thing if there are too many connections between people thinking the same thing.
I was also thinking that there must be other factors at work. In reality there won't be connections just to people but various media and direct sensory data. The latter gets quite interesting. For instance in a theme-park style simulator or VR experience, people sometimes react to things they know full well are not there. So there are definitely different levels of belief and knowledge, and I'm not sure if the network models account for this or not.
Oh, and the other thing that should be mentioned is how beliefs can be used as inoculation against other beliefs, i.e. if Alice says something Bob disagrees with, Bob might (if sufficiently convinced/indoctrinated) perceive Alice's statement as only being evidence of Alice's bias, not that Bob might be wrong. Hence a backfire effect.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if that's included in the network models, but I plan to read through some of the links at the end of the simulations when time permits. Which won't be for a while though.