Psycholoy of it all

I have never taking psychology in high school and now I am in Gpysch  101 this semester. David Daniel is so entertaining I actually do not dread his class! Who would have thought, right?? It is not only him actually I kind of like psychology as a subject. It’s a different way to look at the world, which I have never done before. We just learned about the different parts of the brain and how the work. I think it is so awesome that so many things are going on around your body that you have no recollection of. So since I think like a psychologist now I wanted to know how it affected conspiracy theories.

So I did my research found that Jonah Lehrer published an article, “The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories.” His answer to the theory behind this conspiracy theory is cognitive dissonance. He calls it “one of the most influential theories in social psychology.”  (We haven’t learned about this yet, so I cannot tell you David Daniel’s take on the subject). But this theory was concocted in 1954 by Leon Festinger.  He read an article about a housewife who was convinced the world was coming to an end. She claims she had been getting messages from aliens and had very specific details on where they came from and how the world would end.

                Festinger decided she would make a great case study (study where you study one person extensively, you can find out a lot but cannot generalize to the population).  He pretended to be her follower to see the reactions when they world did not end on December 20, 1954. When that date rolled around the group leader got a telegram from the aliens saying, “This little group sitting all night long had spread so much light,” the aliens told her, “that god saved the world from destruction. Not since the beginning of time upon this Earth has there been such a force of Good and light as now floods this room.” They were stubborn and now the group believed the aliens were MORE real and they got MORE followers. They reacted by becoming even more certain they were right.

                The anterior cingulate cortex is responsible for cognitive dissonance. It is kind of scary that even though we find conflicting evidence, we “double-down” on our beliefs.  We are all vulnerable to this theory, and Festinger was worried about that. Lehrer also points out in his article how easy it is to find “proof” on the internet that a conspiracy theory exists. Nowadays people will believe anything that they find off of a Google search. Thus raises the question, “Is Google Making us Stupid?...” For publishing all this bogus info that tricks us into believing?