#331 Hugo Mercier: Not Born Yesterday; Gullibility, Vigilance, Politics, and Social Media
RECORDED ON March 20th, 2020.
Dr. Hugo Mercier is a research scientist at the CNRS – Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (Institut Jean Nicod), where he works with the Evolution and Social Cognition team. Most of his work so far has focused on the function and workings of reasoning. He’s the author of The Enigma of Reason, and, more recently, Not Born Yesterday: The Science of Who We Trust and What We Believe.
In this episode, we center on Dr. Mercier’s recent book, Not Born Yesterday. He walks us through the recent science that goes against the prevailing narrative in social psychology, that we are extremely gullible, and easily manipulated and deceived. We explore examples in the domains of politics, social media, science, and others.
Time Links:
The history of believing that people in general are gullible in Psychology
Open vigilance
Why the dual system approach to the mind is wrong
How do people deal with new information?
People are not easily influenced by demagogues
Using arguments
Are our intuitions usually sound?
Why do people have weird beliefs?
How do we decide who to trust?
The wisdom of crowds
The effects of media and social media
How to fight the spread of misinformation?
Why is the belief in people’s gullibility so culturally successful?
A final (hopeful) message
Follow Dr. Mercier’s work:
Faculty page: http://bit.ly/2Ro0CBu
Personal website: http://bit.ly/2sTjQp7
Not Born Yesterday: https://amzn.to/37AeDBy
Twitter handle: @hugoreasoning