On The Disinformation That The Information Era Is Creating And How To Influence Others
Recently, I have been reading "The Influential Mind" by Tali Sharot. I am not far in the book yet, but some very interesting points have been made already. The general purpose of the book is to analyze how we influence others, the techniques we use, what is right about them, and what we could do better.
One of the most common ways people debate and try to convince the other is by mentioning people, papers, or research that somehow supports their point. This method that prioritizes information and logic ignores what makes us human: our motives, fears, hopes, and desires. Furthermore, this method has been proven to be ineffective when trying to influence others. If in disbelief, ask yourself how many thanksgiving politics chats have actually ended in one side changing their mind... Tali Sharot claims that there are two key failures in this approach when trying to influence others. First, nowadays because of how Google works, you literally can find support for ANY stance you take on ANY subject. And if that was not enough, these results that Google gives back to you are fine tuned for yourself. The results that are returned are based on your previous web activity. This only strengthens preestablished beliefs instead of challenging them. For example, imagine you are a democrat and have been visiting democrat forums and similar pages. If then a debate happens, and you Google debate results, you are a lot more likely to get back results that claim that the democrat party won the debate. (if you want to know more about how to do "anonymous browsing" to avoid these biased results, check this link) "In fact, the tsunami of information we are receiving today can make us even less sensitive to data because we've become accustomed to finding support for absolutely aything we want to believe, with a simple click of the mouse". Second, and most important, it has been proven that us, humans, tend to accept new data only when it supports our already established beliefs, and reject it when it challenges them.
There is a lot of research supporting the point that we only accept new data that aligns itself with our preestablished beliefs and reject the rest. Nevertheless, for now instead of going deeper into it, I want to initiate a conversation. What do you think about how Google works? Have you ever had a successful influencing on a Thanksgiving table? How did you do it? Have you been stuck on a debate where each side just presents supporting points over and over and the debate not getting anywhere?
Please feel free to share, I'd be really interested.