9/22/2016

NeuroscienceexplainswhypeoplekeepbelievingTrump'sliesQuartz

BELIEVE ME

The neuroscience behind why

people keep believing Trumps
most egregious lies
Gwynn Guilford

September 21, 2016

Turning ction into fact. (Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)

Donald Trump genius for lying approaches pathological. Witness his latest deceit
when he was nally compelled to correct his most infamous mega- b, that president
Barack Obama was born outside the US (and therefore cant legally be president).
What really happened was that Trump replaced the original birther lie with a couple
of fat, shiny new ones:
1. Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. (Trump
must have known he was lying when he said this, given this charge has been
debunked six ways to Sunday.)
2. I nished it. I nished ityou know what I mean. (Not really. Was he referring to
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NeuroscienceexplainswhypeoplekeepbelievingTrump'sliesQuartz

the statement he was about to make, or his previous claims that he sent
investigators to Hawaii in 2011? Either way, Trump lied: Hawaiis state government
proved Obamas birth status in 2008, and theres no proof he sent anyone to
Hawaii.)
The New York Times is now mounting a full-on Trump lie patrol. Unfortunately, it
probably wont matter. Trump has mastered the human brain in a way that the media
cant even hope toand theres a bucket-load of science to prove it.
One thing Trump exploits masterfully is source amnesia, as Sam Wang, a
neuroscience professor at Princeton University and Sandra Aamodt, a neuroscientist
and author, explained in this 2008 article. When we rst encounter a new piece of
information, its stored in the hippocampus, and every time we recall it, our brain
rewrites the info a little more permanently. After a while, this info is shifted to our
brains long-term storage facility, the cerebral cortex. But the source of the
informationor the context in which we learned itdoesnt usually come along with
that move. This is why you probably cant remember how exactly you learned that
Neptune is the eighth planet from the sun, or who rst told you that Chinas capital is
Beijing.
You also probably cant recall how you know that the forbidden fruit in the Bible is an
apple, or that ninjas are sneaky, black-clad assassins.
Neither of those two facts are necessarily trueand thats the problem with source
amnesia. If a false statementor a fact of dodgy origin, or something offered with a
disclaimeris recalled enough, the misinformation gets stored without the
accompanying caveats. Then the more its recalled, the moretrue it becomes.
Trumps media reach and his frequent repetition of the birther liewhich went on at
least until 2014unquestionably contributed to the fact that more than a third of the
American electorate believe Obama was born outside the US, from a poll taken in midSeptember:

"Do you think Barack Obama was born in the US, or not?"
Total
Yes

Democrat
61%

Independent Republican

83%

59%

No

22

10

21

Don't know

17

19

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33%
39
28

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Don't know

17

NeuroscienceexplainswhypeoplekeepbelievingTrump'sliesQuartz

19

Data: YouGov

28

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Another cognitive quirk probably explains why Democrats are far likelier than
Republicans to believe Obama was born in the US. Our brains arent objective
information gathering machines; they are lters that sort and prioritize information
based on how it ts with our moral worldview. News that accords with what we already
think stays. Anything that challenges it gets deleted.
Republicans are far more likely to object to Obamas policies and, therefore, are more
willing to believe information that validates their contempt for the presidents
authority. Theyre also, on average, much likelier to believe that blacks are lazier, more
violent, and more criminal than whites, suggesting a more general bias against blacks,
as Quartz recently explored.
Trump is just one of millions of birthers with a prior disposition to be skeptical of a
black man becoming President, writes Wang in a Princeton Election Consortium
blogpost published Sept. 20.
The lessons from the long, disgraceful life of the Obama birther slur are bleak ones.
This is why those calling for fact-checking armadas to battle Trump lies during the
debates will probably be disappointed in the results. As Wang and Aamodt wrote in
2008, by repeating a false rumor, they may inadvertently make it stronger.
LOOPHOLES

Charted: Divorce rates go up and

down with home prices in
Chinas big cities
Zheping Huang

6 hours ago

http://qz.com/787183/neuroscienceexplainswhypeoplekeepbelievingtrumpslies/

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