the friendly rumor mill

“The family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation.”

Don DeLillo’s insight could now be extended to friends, according to new study.

Kelly Garrett, an Ohio State prof, surveyed Americans about 10 rumors that swirled around the internet during the 2008 elections. Unsurprisingly, Garrett found, Americans came across a lot of rumors online – but they also came across rebuttals, which in the end cancelled out any propensity to fall for the rumors.

But while the 600 surveyed were immune to fabrications on the web, they were not unsusceptible to rumors they received from friends via email. Friends, of course, are trustworthy sources in our eyes. And since our friends tend to hold similar views, we’re unlikely to get emailed equally “trustworthy” rebuttals to balance out the falsehoods.

Garrett’s results suggest that Eli’s concern that personalization algorithms create yet another cradle (or filter bubble) of misinformation is not wholly imagined. While more rumors filter through our friends, and rebuttals get bounced out, we’re increasingly likely to be a misinformed nation.

(cross-posted from thefilterbubble.com)

Conspiracy theory nation

This week Slate's David Weigel reviews Among the Truthers: A Journey Through America's Growing Conspiracist Underground, Jonathan Kay's tour of Truthers, Birthers and Vacciners, among other nutty theorists.

The explanation for the apparent explosion of conspiracy groups? Our self-imposed information bubbles:

"The media, as Kay points out, is more fragmented than ever. Information is easier to come across, and bogus information has a way of jumping to the top of Google's search pages. That fragmentation is happening at a time of intense partisan anger and economic angst."

(cross-posted from thefilterbubble.com)

recent research

More from Kevin Lewis' blog:

• A chaotic environment makes us stereotype more.
• An economist builds a model to understand how creativity connects to geography.
• Justice depends on the time of day: judges make more favorable rulings right after their breaks.
• More brain scans comparing liberals and conservatives.
• Two studies explore why we find evil action so much worse than evil inaction.
• What we see depends on how we feel.
• Our personalities influence our politics - but only via the moral values we hold.
• Conservatives are more apt to hold negative stereotypes. (An older study also confirms that conservatives tend to accentuate to the negative - as does a recent study.)
• When we imagine cause and effect: we get "pseudoscience, superstition and quackery."
• When policies move from democracy to democracy.
• If you're a professional athlete (or in the navy), it pays to be good-looking.
• It's not just humans who wear their personalities on their faces.
• Ever notice when someone's pupils get larger? Probably not, but your amygdala knows.
  
• We're natural born cheaters, at least when our defenses are down.
• The benefits of being interested.
• How consistent is your identity? Depends on how powerful you are.
• Belonging to many groups is good for your health.
• Political participation is for the happy - in Germany too.
• The president's approval ratings are up. Or is it just a sunny day?
• Philosophically we're in tune with our "true" rather than "actual" self.
• Monkey see, monkey buy.
• Getting verbal and nonverbal persuasion to fit.
• The Commitment principle in action.
• Evidence that we sift out information that supports our previous views - this time when it comes to home child care or daycare.
• What's good for the gossip is good for the group.
• Why politicians get away with dodging the question.

recent research

The Kevin Lewis catch-up continues:

• A sense of choice makes us feel good about ourselves - but less empathetic toward others.
• Americans are getting more self-absorbed, as evidenced by pop music.
• Inequality makes us distrust each other - and recession makes us all distrust the government.
• Studying science doesn't make us believe any less in god.
• The best predictor of average IQ among US states? Infectious disease.
• More evidence that we're altruists not just to our kin - but to our closest social ties.
• Team mentality may not be good for politics, but it could help our personal well-being.
• Another reason (not) to have low self-esteem - nobody wants to hang out with you.
• Distrust of "others" goes far back in humans - all the way to Macaques.
• We haven't entered the pure echo chamber yet: events are still the main drivers of news (more so than advocacy groups and the government).
• College makes us better citizens, but less so for rich kids.
• Explaining a paradox: why collectivist societies are more apt to bribe.
• We vote for the good looking guy - especially if we watch TV and aren't politically active.
• The effect of political ads are short-lived.
• Leaders have to be just like everyone else - and have that vision thing.
• Evidence that politicians are more partisan than their constituents.
• Yup, we tend to watch and believe media we agree with - but we're are also persuaded by other viewpoints.
• Beware the worm! Simulcasting political debates and real-time public reaction distorts our political choices.
• Do you pick your party based on issues - or do you pick your issues based on party? Not clear.
• We don't like money in politics - but we're unwilling to pay for campaigns ourselves.
• We may actually learn something from political ads.
• Likely losers and online news users are less prone to confirmation bias.
• Reporters follow their leaders.
• Politicians taking credit for whatever they can.
• Europeans don't pay attention to pesky policy positions either.

And what I ran into along the way:

• Changing our perception of "distance" (in time, place or social connection) changes how polite we are.

recent research

More tip-offs from Kevin Lewis:

• Following the crowd pays off among traders.
• Preaching to kids about healthy eating won't get them to eat less junk, but showing them "aversive images" may do the trick.
• We're happier with our online relationships than with our real ones.
• Conservatives are liberals by nature. Put another way, it turns out conservatives are more intellectual than liberals.
• We like our choices to be simpler - except when we want them to be more complex. It all depends on our expectations.
• Don't believe in free will? It's not just an academic question.
• Laughter makes us morally non-judgmental.
• It's better to judge on output rather than process, at least when it comes to complex tasks.
• Confirmation bias may be a good bias to have.
• Anger and disgust may help us be more rational.
• We're more susceptible to framing effects at night.
• Where do our values come from? The amygdala.

self-propagating memes

James Gleick offers a brief history of "memetics," the science of how ideas spread, at Smithsonian.com.

Sadly the meme of memetics has been on the wane in recent years, largely because - compared to its cousin genetics - its code was infinitely messier and more difficult to parse. Genetics has an alphabet of four letters with all words (or codons) restricted to three letters. Even if you only looked at memes in the English language, you're talking 26 letters and almost half a million words.

Memetics, then, may have been stunted by the limits of data crunching power.

That could very well change in the near future as super-computing makes processing terabytes of data easier every day. In fact, network theorists may have already emerged as the next generation of memeticians. Studies that track ideas spreading via Twitter, blogposts and FB keep cropping up. (Here's a recent example that used fancy statistical analysis on 580 million tweets.) It may not be long before we understand how ideas spread as well as we do viruses and genetic mutations.

our unscientific minds

This week in MotherJones, Chris Mooney does a bang-up job of summarizing many of the cognitive biases and tricks of the mind that keep us from having truly open minds - particularly when it comes to politics.

It's a worthwhile tour through "motivate reasoning," "confirmation bias," "rationalization," "reactance," and the power of social influence. Chris also gets my hearty thanks for pointing out that conservatives and liberals are both subject to bias; for better or worse, no ideological group has cornered the market on reason.