Catalogue of Thoughts

A personal project by Smita Sjahputri

[smitasjahputri]

"Much of what we believe about life comes not from fact but from fiction"

--Jessica Wise

From the TED-Ed Lesson: How Fiction Can Change Reality.

(via teded).

[smitasjahputri]

--On Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot", illustration by Zen Pencil.

(click on image to enlarge).

[smitasjahputri]

--A chart on what we are not doing when we’re online, based on the what people expressed on Twitter.

Originally published in a piece I wrote a while back on Boomee English titled: Want to Get Work Done? Stay Away From Your Smartphone.

Might not be the most empirical way of gathering information, but it might give you a few insights on what we're missing out on just because we're growing addicted to the Internet, especially the social networks.

[smitasjahputri]

I found this essay that explores on the latest cultural disorder that is undermining our peace of mind, which is experienced by 56% of social networks/social media users, called Fear of Missing Out (FoMO).

I think this is quite a good read to understand one of the ways Internet and technology have affected us as human beings. Some of the pointers are also introduced in the animation video I posted a couple of days ago.

Here are the key takeaways from the essay:

It is “the feeling that we’re missing out on something more exciting, more important, or more interesting going on somewhere” or the uneasiness we feel when we thought others are having more rewarding experience and we are not part of it.

It appears that one of the reasons why this is happening is that in this increasingly connected world, being that connected to everyone all the time with the aid of technology is a new human experience, and we’re still not equipped to cope with that yet.

Sherry Turkle, author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (2011), says that technology has become the major construct through which we define intimacy. We confuse our hundreds, or even thousands, of ‘friends’ on social networks with the handful of intimate friends we have in reality. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, Turkle claims that the price we are paying for technological prosperity is the gradual decline of important relationships – with our parents, children, or partners – and the birth of a new type of loneliness. Insecure in our relationships, and anxious about intimacy,’ she writes, ‘we look to technology for ways to be in relationships, and protect ourselves from them at the same time.’

One of solutions offered for this is to get away once in a while from our gadgets, with that we will find that even though we’re missing out on something, we can still function without them.

Another study shown that most people find it easier to abstain from food and sex through willpower alone than to stay away from online networks, where the failure rate was 42 per cent.

But then again, simply detaching from our gadgets might not work as effectively if we don’t try to really understand how our brains and our humanity work.

In his study, published on Computers in Human Behavior in 2013, Andrew Przybylski concluded that FoMO is a driving force behind social media use. FoMO levels are highest in young people, in particular young men. It is high in distracted drivers, who engage in other activities while behind the wheel. And perhaps most revealing, FoMO occurs mostly in people with unfulfilled psychological needs in realms such as love, respect, autonomy and security. All in all, we are afraid of missing out on love and on feeling that we belong; those of us heavily invested in work also fear missing an opportunity for professional advancement or a profitable deal.

Hence, it appears that the best way to cope with FoMO is to recognize that, at our frenetic pace of life, we are sometimes bound to miss out.

in 1956 by Herbert Simon, an American multidisciplinary researcher and Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics used the term ‘satisfice’ – a portmanteau of ‘satisfy’ and ‘suffice’ – to suggest that instead of trying to maximize our benefits, we seek a merely ‘good enough’ result. Simon’s strategy relies on the assumption that we simply do not have the cognitive capacity to optimize complex decision-making. We cannot process the mass of information entailed in weighing all available options and probable outcomes – both on the social networks and off. Thus, the best move is ‘satisficing’ – choosing the first available option that meets our predetermined criteria, which is good enough.

People who insist on optimizing decisions are ultimately less satisfied with their choices that those who made do with the “good enough”. They also will have fewer achievements.

In a series of experiments led by the Swarthmore College social psychologist Barry Schwartz, the researchers found a negative correlation between the tendency to optimize and happiness, self-esteem and satisfaction, and a positive correlation between the same tendency and depression, perfectionism and regret. Another study in the series found that people who optimize also engage in more social comparison, and are adversely affected when they come up short.

FoMO is also costing us our attention, which is already limited enough to begin with. The difficulty of spreading our already taxed attention over unprecedented amounts of information derives not just from our cognitive problem with prioritizing, but also from our inability to consume and process it all.

Taking the ‘good-enough’ approach to this crushing problem is not merely a tactic for improving our decision-making. It is first and foremost a world-view, a way of life; some researchers even believe it is a hereditary personality trait.

Perfectionism is the personality trait most associated with aspiring towards maximizing the outcome of decisions. However, those of us who know perfectionists, know that for them life is one never-ending score sheet that throws them into a self-assessment tizzy of frustration, anxiety and sometimes even depression. Perfectionists tend to confuse error with failure, and their attempt to hide their errors, even the inevitable ones, prevents them from accepting the critical feedback so necessary for personal growth. They would probably give a great deal for the relief of being able to ‘satisfice’.

The last bit kind of struck a chord in me. Haha!

[smitasjahputri]

--What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Epipheo.

Love, love, love the animation!

[smitasjahputri]

To change false beliefs, appealing to a person’s sense of self may be more important than the facts.

Another good read on false beliefs and misinformation.

Will try to read and share some of the papers and findings cited in the article during the weekend.

[smitasjahputri]

The Irrationality of Politics. A TEDx talk by Michael Huemer from the University of Colorado.

Read his essay on the matter: here.

[smitasjahputri]

Debiasing in an Open Society: Recommendations for the Practitioners (or simply, The How-To)

In the last part of the paper, Lewandowksy offers a few how-to for those trying to communicate the right information to public.

The pointers are very brief and self-explanatory (especially if you have been following the arguments so far about misinformation that he presented):

Another point I would like to address is that most of the time trying to correct a certain misinformation can be a tricky business. People get defensive and things can get ugly, especially if discussion evolves into heated arguments about what is right and wrong.

In relation to this, I have come across an article by BBC that covers one of the ways to win an argument. Even better, they dubbed it as “The Best Way to Win an Argument”.

Apparently, correction of misinformation might be able to be elicited from the people who wrongfully believing in it –and instead of taking the approach of gorging them with alternative information that is more valid or “bludgeon them into submission”, we can eliminate the effect of misinformation by an approach that involves more listening.

A rather peaceful approach, indeed.

Based on the study cited in the article, by Rozenblit and Keil from Yale University, they suggested that in many instances people’s understanding is superficial at best. They refer to the phenomenon as “the illusion of explanatory depth”.

What happens, argued the researchers, is that we mistake our familiarity with these things for the belief that we have a detailed understanding of how they work. Usually, nobody tests us and if we have any questions about them we can just take a look. Psychologists call this idea that humans have a tendency to take mental short cuts when making decisions or assessments the "cognitive miser" theory.

Why would we bother expending the effort to really understand things when we can get by without doing so? The interesting thing is that we manage to hide from ourselves exactly how shallow our understanding is.

I believe that in our political choices, most of the time we also fall into this trap. Most of the time, when we’re not so vocal about our political choices, like who we’re going to vote for in the election, people don’t really ask us to explain our choices. Hence, our knowledge would go unchallenged and we will continue to think that what we know is right.

Worse still, when we don’t often find ourselves with people of differing political stances, we would also get our knowledge unchallenged, and worse, our confidence in it being the truth will get stronger, because everyone we know believe in the same thing. We won’t bother to evaluate whether our understanding or knowledge is thorough.

Another study by Philip Fernbach of the University of Colorado suggested a way to utilize this illusion of understanding to help convincing people about a misinformation.

Most of the times, he argued, people might have an extreme political stance over something even without truly understanding the matter at focus (although they have the illusion that they do).

The research finding shows that when people are asked to meticulously explain and trace information or a belief that they hold, instead of being asked about the reasons or why they believe that it is true, people might become less confident and less certain about their own knowledge.

They were not ask to present a case to persuade other people of why they belief is true, they were merely asked to explain in details about their knowledge on something. Apparently when asked to do so, the action of objectively explaining to others about it forced them to sort out their knowledge and then they might find that their understanding and knowledge is not as elaborate and convincing as they might have thought

In a way, this approach helps them to critically evaluate their own beliefs, and in this case, the misinformation they have been holding on.

Also, this will help in sorting out misinformation without the need of being overly pushy and repulsive.

Sounds pretty neat, don’t you think?

[smitasjahputri]

Reducing the Impact of Misinformation

The second last section in the Lewandowsky's paper dwells into the factors that will help in reducing the impact of misinformation in the society.

As discussed in previous section, corrections or retractions of misinformation often fails in eliminating the effect of misinformation on people. Also, as stated before, this is worrying because when people are believing in the wrong things and making their decision based on them, they might not only going to harm themselves but also affecting the whole society.

Hence, the efforts to reduce impact of misinformation become increasingly crucial, especially in such important timing like when we’re going to vote for the president (essentially choosing who’s going to rule and set the direction of our country for the next 5 years).

In the paper, he offered three ways that have been identified to help increasing the effectiveness of correcting misinformation.

By introducing pre-exposure warnings

Misinformation effects can be reduced if people are explicitly warned up front that information they are about to be given may be misleading; however, the warning needs to specifically explain the ongoing effects of misinformation, rather than just generally mention its potential presence.

Meaning that to be able to fully succeed in correcting a misinformation, we have to be vigilant and able to identify its appearance in an instant, so that corrections can be done without much of time delay (the delay is usually serve as time for people to accept the misinformation as truth).

We have covered that people have a default setting to accept things rather than to reject it. Hence, by providing a warning about certain things that might mislead them, it would help them to “override” this default setting and approach the information presented to them with more critical eyes.

It’s like saying “wait, slow down, process it slowly and with more skepticism before you accept it as truth!”

Of course warning would be best introduced before people actually encounter the misinformation. However, in real life and especially with the internet flooding us with so much information, it would be very hard to monitor how and when people get exposed to misinformation.

Alternatively, warnings can also be somewhat effective when issued after the misinformation is being accepted –but of course, it would take more effort.

By repeatedly issuing corrections

The success of retractions can also be enhanced if they are repeated or otherwise strengthened.

Although this seems to be a rather “common sense” approach to eliminate the effect of misinformation, however, it has been said that if misinformation is encoded repeatedly, then repeating corrections would only help to alleviate (but not eliminate) the effect of the misinformation.

We are also threading a thin line here because sometimes this approach can backfire. As mentioned before, failure in correcting misinformation often occurs because, rather than making people become more aware of the invalidity of the misinformation, repeated corrections might strengthened the misinformation further by enhancing its familiarity in people’s minds.

But, in the end, no one can blame you for trying, right?

By filling the gap –providing an alternative account

One of the downfalls of corrections is when they fail to create a stronger and more plausible alternative to the story that is provided by the misinformation. When a correction only debunks one part of the misinformation, people are left will gaps to fill in their understanding of certain event or circumstance.

Providing an alternative explanation of the event can fill the gap left behind by retracting misinformation. Studies show the continued influence of misinformation can be eliminated by provision of an alternative that explains why the misinformation was incorrect.

Several things to note when trying to replace a misinformation:

First, the correction must provide a plausible explanation; by including all the important aspects in the prior misinformation and detailing on why the misinformation was mistaken as truth in the first place.

Second, the success of a correction can be improved if they provide the explanation behind the motivation of the misinformation (e.g. why is the rumor being spread in the first place? Was it to benefit certain parties? Or was it an honest mistake?) This can help people making sense of their previous wrongful beliefs.

Third, the corrections must also address the remaining information build upon the prior misinformation. In short, creating a full story that also debunks the other elements of the misinformation, not only the main part of it.

Fourth, corrections must be presented in less complex manner than the misinformation. This is because people generally prefer simple explanation over overly complex one. Providing a complex explanation or many counter arguments can be very alluring at times because we’re trying to give a coherent picture about the truth. However, this could make people squirmed away from the correction because it is too hard to process.

Fifth, we have to be aware that people might also become suspicious about the corrections being issued. In the paper, Lewandowsky elaborated this point as follows:

Suspicion about the rationale behind the correction, as well as for the initial presentation of the misinformation, may be particularly important in political corrections; that is, specific motivations likely lie behind a politician’s explanation for events, so people may place more suspicion on alternative explanations from some sources.

[smitasjahputri]

Academic Writing, courtesy of Calvin & Hobbes.

One word: OUCH! ;-D

[smitasjahputri]

The Continued Influence Effect, when Retractions Fail to Eliminate the Influence of Misinformation

In reality, –and proven in a lot of researches— it has been shown that most of the time, corrections or retractions of misinformation (or black campaigns) have very little effect in straightening up what has been wrongfully believed by people.

Even when people know that corrections or clarification has been issued, and they remembered what the new and truthful information is, they would still somehow cling on to the old misinformation.

In a way, when people are faced with a correction of a misinformation they have believed in for a period of time, what happen is that the new information (which usually is valid and correct) now competes with the old misinformation –and in this case, the good guys aren’t always winning.

This phenomenon when people continue to rely on misinformation in their reasoning even though they have been exposed to corrections is called the continued influence effect.

As an illustration, here’s one of the popular misinformation in a form of a black campaigns that is circulating in this period of Indonesia presidential election campaign:

The term “Capres Boneka” is coined to refer to a candidate as a “puppet doll” being controlled by several parties behind him (allegedly, the political parties supporting him, a group of businessmen with different agendas, a certain religious group, etc.)

The term implicate that the candidate is merely nominated because he is popular with the people, but in the end will not have any power to actually make a difference as he has a lot of powerful drivers that will steer him in a way that only benefit certain groups.

The keywords I used to get the conversation numbers on Twitter is a general one; so the numbers in the graph will include all sorts of ways people use this term in their tweets: for people who believed in this misinformation, as a part of their reasoning; and for those trying to set things straight, as a part of a clarification or correction efforts.

The issue has been circulating for almost two months now. But looking at the increasing trend in the graph, it might indicate that even in the last month alone, people are still discussing so much about it. It is not something that is easily forgotten, or being let go by people; and efforts to clarify are still being done.

In his paper, Lewandowsky and team tried to explain several assumptions that made correction or retraction of misinformation ineffective.

It has something to do with people’s mental models

Most of the time, misinformation usually is presented as a central piece of a coherent story. Hence, in order to really correct certain misinformation, a clarification cannot just address the main misinformation –it has to debunk the whole entire story by challenging the other elements within the back-story of the misinformation.

The problem is sometimes the correction fails to do so.

If a retraction then invalidates a central piece of information, then people are left with a gap in their model of the event. Recipients are left with an event representation that just “doesn’t make sense” unless they maintain the false assertion.

Here’s the thing, people get uncomfortable if they find gaps in their knowledge about something. Hence, they would rather prefer an incorrect model over an incomplete one. When people already have a coherent story they believed in based on the prior misinformation that they were exposed to, if a corrections then come but with weaker supporting elements, they might fail to internalize the corrections as the truth and continue to cling on to the misinformation.

Why? Because it is easier to do.

Having a plausible answer to a question readily available, but at the same time knowing that it is wrong, may generate a state of conflict that is most easily resolved by sticking to the original idea and ignoring the retraction

Especially if they are being asked directly to explain about the information –it is not a nice feeling to know something is right but unable to elaborate on it; hence, to eliminate this negative feeling, they may choose something that is already more elaborate –in this case, the misinformation with stronger backstory.

It also has something to do with their memories and the failure in retrieving them

As said before, when people are presented by a correction of misinformation, there’s a competition in their cognitive processed between the two: the misinformation they have acquired and the new information that invalidates it.

It is very likely that people remember and store both information in their memory, however, when they are being asked about the issue, it is now a matter of which information can be retrieved faster and easier that will dominate their reasoning.

It has to be noted that processing a correction usually take place by putting a “negation tag” to the competing information. Hence, it is very important for a correction to help people process by explicitly putting the negation for them; because failure to do so will make them connect the dots slower and less likely to success in pairing the correction with the targeted misinformation.

For example, if a correction to a misinformation that said “a candidate is a puppet doll” is presented explicitly as “he is not a puppet doll” people will be easier to process it (and it might have a better chance of correcting the misinformation) rather than going around it and say “he is a man of independence in his opinion”. The indirect rebuttal will take longer and harder to process, and consequently, harder to recollect when asked to do so.

It is a matter of fluency and familiarity

This is a tricky one. This point actually said that sometimes a correction fails, or even backfires, because it becomes the repeating exposure of the targeted misinformation –enhancing its familiarity in people.

Generally, repetition of information strengthens that information and leads to stronger belief simply because repeated information seems more familiar, or because repeated information is associated with different contexts which can serve as later retrieval cues.

When corrections of a certain misinformation are issued repeatedly, instead of making people forget about the misinformation and adopt the correct one, it might result in more familiarity in people’s mind about the misinformation. Making them even more strongly believing in the misinformation because they keep on encountering it.

Especially if there is a time delay between the acquisition of misinformation and the presentation of the correction, people will be more likely to be trapped in a confusion of which information they should believe.

As they already have time to internalize and rationalize the misinformation, it would be harder to now process the correction.

Lastly, it is a matter of reactance

The last assumption stated that correction can be ineffective because of “social reactance”.

People generally do not like to be told what to think and how to act, so particularly authoritative retractions may be rejected.

At times, a correction take the tone of “I know better than you, that’s why I’m going to tell you that what you believe is wrong and this is the correct one!”

It is no surprise that people hate being treated that way and thus, they might reject the correction and hold on more strongly to what they think is the “right” information in the first place.

[smitasjahputri]

Gender Imbalance in Science Writing: Data from #SciWriSum14

Recap of data presentation from opening plenary of Women in Science Writing Solutions Summit, 14 June 2014: gender, diversity, harassment and advancement.

Not quite sure how similar the situation here in Indonesia. However, considering that even science writing is not very big, I think we have larger, more apparent issue than gender bias: first, people has to know about science writing and be comfortable with it.

At least that what I see in my point of view.

[smitasjahputri]

Individual-level Cognitive Processes involved in Acquisition and Persistence of Misinformation

After we divulged in the society-level mechanisms that enable misinformation to circulate, the second part of the paper zooms into the discussion of the cognitive processes that happen in individual that is involved in the acquisition and the persistence of misinformation.

Which basically explores on how we, as individuals, asses the truth of a statement, accept it, and then internalize it.

The tricky thing about misinformation is that it rarely comes with a warning label or a disclaimer. Hence, we won’t really know whether something is actually a misinformation and incorrect, until we come across a correction. However, to make things even more complicated, some research suggests that we have some sort of default setting to accept things rather than to reject them.

The paper suggests that there’s evidence showing that rejecting information require more mental effort: we have to really put high attention to the information, consider all sorts of things that might help us find it implausible, and also assert a high level of distrust.

Moreover, usually before we manage to cross check information against any other relevant evidence or truth, we have to be able to comprehend the information first –and comprehension apparently requires us to (temporarily) accept it as the truth.

Usually when we do really evaluate information in order to accept it as truth, we would do so by considering several questions:

“Is this information compatible with other things I believe is true?”

Studies on social judgment and persuasion literature cited in the paper shown that “information is more likely to be accepted when it is consistent with other things the person assumes to be true”.

When there’s a larger, consistent knowledge base that is compatible with the new information that have been presented to us, then it would be more likely that we accept it as the truth and harder for us to change our stance once we have accepted it.

This is because we feel like we have all the supporting evidences that point to the same direction as the new information, as well as when we start to question and reject this new information, it would mean that we have to change or correct all the prior information that we have, too.

In political campaign, when a black campaign is compatible with other known information, that would make it easier for people to accept it and then, it would be less likely for a clarification to be able to correct them.

Moreover, emotions also do get involved when we process new information. Rationally checking an information against our prior knowledge can be mentally exhaustive. Hence, sometimes we revert back to our intuition to judge whether the new information “feels right” for us. When it does, it would signal that the information is indeed consistent with our prior knowledge and believes, making it easier to be processed. It would feel familiar and we would stop scrutinizing it further.

Apparently, this can be manipulated by means of the presentation and delivery of information. The whole experience of encountering the new information counts. Even things like font choices, color schemes, language uses; all of that can be manipulated in order to make people believe that the information is valid.

As a result, analytic as well as intuitive processing favors the acceptance of messages that are compatible with a recipient’s preexisting beliefs: there are no elements that contradict other things one knows and the message is easy to process and “feels right”.

“Is it a coherent story?”

Ultimately, for new information to be easily accepted as truth, it has to be supported by a greater story that will help us “making sense” of it.

Even if we do not have any prior knowledge about the information, if it is supported by other related pieces that formed a storyline that we find coherent, we are more likely to accept it as true.

I believe this is why in black campaigns, usually a statement alone won’t work. However, if a statement is paired with a photo or a link to an article (all might have been a product of fabrication, too), people will find it easier to believe them.

These other elements also will form a stronger base that will make correction less effective, because when we want to debunk one part of the whole story, we have to also prove the other parts as wrong. So it won’t be effective just to say that “no, that statement is wrong!” to make people stop believing a black campaign, you have to other evidences that correct the other element like the photo, or the article, or any other “supporting” element of the black campaign.

“Is it a credible source?”

The paper argues that “when people lack the motivation, opportunity, or expertise to process a message in sufficient detail, they can resort to an assessment of the credibility of the communicator”. So, instead of dissecting the information critically, we might retort to judging whether the information comes from a credible source in order to accept it.

Information coming from those we perceived as experts, authoritative figures, or highly credible sources (like the government or the media) would be easier to be accepted as true and valid. We might find the information as questionable, but since we trusted the source, we can readily accept the information.

Unfortunately, even the untrustworthy sources can be influential in spreading misinformation that people believe in.

I think in the age of Internet, the definition of expert and credible source gets a little blurry. For example, if someone tweets a lot about politics, we might assume the person is knowledgeable about it. Hence, we would rarely think twice to question the information that the person is delivering. Even obscure sources branding itself as “new media” also sometimes perceived as credible.

Lastly, “Do others believe it?”

One of the judgments we make when processing new information is whether other people also believe it. When we feel like there is a social consensus that believes in the same thing we just come across, we are more likely to accept it as truth.

A way to create this social consensus is to broadcast the same message to a large group of people. Hence, when they turn to each other to clarify it, or what they called getting “second reality test”, they will find the same information being reiterated back to them.

 Even without having to clarify with each other, the effect of massive and repeated exposure to an information would lead us to think that others have endorsed it (although, maybe in reality they are just as clueless as you).

Perceived social consensus can thus serve to solidify and maintain belief in misinformation.

Looking at the explanation of how people process an information, it is quite clear how a successful black campaign managed to manipulate people in thinking a certain misinformation is true.

Successful black campaign usually is done massively, bombarding society with the same misinformation for a duration of time and employing sources that would be perceived as credible (media, authoritative figures, “experts”).

The message also usually is designed carefully to target certain groups, in a way that is more familiar and not so intrusive to the targeted segment –in popular language for the youth, in simple phrases for the less educated, or in business-like style for the more well-to-do.

Also, the main impact comes from It is not being presented alone, but with supporting elements (photos, images, links to articles) that create a coherent story.

And for people with less interest in dissecting any new information further, especially about things as complicated as politics and its politicians (we all know they would have some murky past at some point), it is no wonder carefully crafted and elaborate black campaigns work like magic.

[smitasjahputri]

Sleeping Habits of Geniuses. From: Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, by Mason Currey.

Habits, mechanism, benefits, and any other thing related to sleep always interest me. Well, maybe because I kind of need plenty of it, like, right now.

(But still not getting much. Oh, dear.)

[smitasjahputri]

Origins of Misinformation

As mentioned in the last post, one of the papers I encountered explores in details the mechanism of dissemination or the spreading of misinformation in society.

This is the first part of the paper’s discussion, which explores the most likely sources of misinformation that we encounter everyday.

Lewandowsky argues that the human culture strongly depends on people passing on information. Two main factors that determine the spreading of information have been identified as believability and emotional content of the information.

However, as we all know, not all information that seems believable and have strong emotion-evoking content is true.

Before we get into the explanation about the sources of misinformation, Lewandowsky made a disclaimer: apparently, misinformation is not always meant to mislead.

Misinformation could easily occur if we don’t have all the right information at the moment.

For example, during news coverage of unfolding events, corrections are sometimes required as more information is gathered to clarify previous statements or assumptions. In science, the same thing also happens when replication studies proved a finding is false or not replicable.

These are examples where misinformation could come from a rather “innocent” sources. However, misinformation can also be coming and spreading from sources that are less “innocent”.

Several sources of more purposeful (or carefully designed) misinformation includes: rumors or fiction, governments and politicians, vested and corporate interests, media, and of course, the internet and social networks.

Rumor and Fictions

Stories that are believable and evoke strong emotions like disgust, fear, and happiness would have very high shareability. As expected, fictions and rumors have very high value in believability because they frequently contain valid world knowledge; however, the main determining point is that their presentation are usually emotion-evoking, hence the information would be easier to be adopted and passed on.

The interesting thing is that even though we know that we are dealing with a source that has been explicitly identified as fictional (which means that they are likely to depart from reality or facts at certain point), when we encounter a misinformation that is so believable, it can lead us to assume that we had known it all along and then the misinformation would be integrated with prior knowledge.

Governments and Politicians

It is no secret that sometimes government and politicians, especially during crucial times like election campaigns, would spread some politically-motivated misinformation to the society. (Shamefully too, that it might not always sided with the best interest for the society but for the governments propaganda —but maybe that’s just me being cynical.)

Most of the time, we are aware of that too. However, studies have found that when we have to identify which information is actually true and which is misinformation, we could not really differentiate between the two.

Vested interests or Non-Government Organizations

Systematic campaigns of course do not only happen in the political spheres. Companies, or even NGOs, that have certain interests at hand usually also conduct a designed spreading of misinformation that would benefit their causes.

Media

As mentioned earlier, media sometimes could not avoid reporting certain misinformation based on the need to cover news as quickly as possible. But, this rather “honest mistakes” would usually be corrected as more information is revealed and media would usually issue corrections by presenting the new findings.

However, there are several other systemic reasons that could lead to media spreading misinformation.

Lewandowsky mentioned two reasons: first, oversimplification, misrepresentation, or over-dramatization of coverage (sensationalist coverage); and second, failure in presenting a “balanced” story. The latter might include over-extending the “balance” frame by including “experts” that might not relevant to the issue at hand.

The Role of Internet

Lewandowsky stated that while the internet has “revolutionized the availability of information, however, it has also facilitated the spread of misinformation because conventional “gate-keeping” mechanisms, such as professional editors, have ceased to apply to the internet”.

With the rising of social networks, the spreading of misinformation is very difficult to hold back. Sources with questionable credibility could easily pass on as trusted because they appear to be so on the Internet, and there’s no really good place to verify the information.

So it is very likely for internet users to carry misinformation and think that it is coming from credible source from the internet, when in fact, the information has been wrong the whole time.

Lastly, Lewandowsky also mentioned that misinformation could occur as consequence of increasing media fractionation.

I think this point is one of the most interesting because I have been dealing with a lot of misinformation (in a form of black campaign) being circulated in social media.

Media fractionation leads to more media choices for people— we are no longer a passive audience being forced to watch, read, or listen to things that others have chosen for us; instead now we can even choose what shows we want or don’t want to see on Cable TV, what news station we want to follow, or what kind of song choice we want to hear in our customized and personalized online radios.

With the growing selection of media to choose from, people might also find it easier to choose media sources that would approve on their stand points or personal preferences. This phenomenon is called selective exposure.

Moreover, as social networks or social medias have grown stronger in presence, this would create and “echo chambers” in which people are more easily and disproportionately being exposed to certain (mostly, political) point of views of similar stances and not to those in the opposite side.

In a similar tone, apart from the Lewandowsky’s paper, a TED talk by Eli Pariser, the chief executive of Upworthy, also have issued the same warning to similar phenomenon he dubbed as “Filter Bubbles”.

In his talk, Pariser argues that personalization of web content is the major direction for most of Internet right now, which result to “a world in which the Internet is showing us what it thinks we want to see, but not necessarily what we need to see”.

The problem is that when everything that we encounter in the web is personalized, we are more likely to be trapped in a filter bubble, which he defined as “our own personal, unique universe of information that we live in online”. Since most of the gatekeepers of this information are algorithm instead of humans, they might have lost the kind of embedded ethics of social responsibility that human editors of information had. The only thing that they calculate is relevance.

As illustration, lets say you go into a news site and read several articles. The algorithms would detect the pattern of you reading choice and formulate a list of other articles that it think you might like based on your previous reading list. If your pattern of choice is simple (for example, you are always reading on same topics or same authors) it would more likely to give you options to explore similar type of reading without giving you the choice of reading materials that is not relevant to your previous preferences.

This would ultimately make you only get exposed to one type of “universe” without the chance of venturing outside this bubble.

Now, that’s only for what we get online from news site. In the end, it is also no surprise that in our social media or social networking sites, we are more likely to friend, follow, or like people with the same point of view with ours. In a way, this made us “unbalanced” in getting all the information.

Consequently, when we’re always in the same loop, misinformation –or in the election campaign period, in a form of black campaign—would be easier to be encountered and then in time, internalized and embedded to our minds. We would believe that it is true.

However, of course these are just the societal mechanisms that expose us to the misinformation or the black campaigns. To really understand the process of acquisition and persistence of misinformation in our minds, we would have to also look into the individual level of cognitive processes.

I will cover more on that in the next post!

[smitasjahputri]

I came across this paper when I was gathering information on black campaign and why it tends to be persistent in people's minds; and as I read through, I think this paper has quite an elaborate hypothesis and argument about the issue.

The paper explores on spreading or dissemination mechanisms of misinformation in society, both inadvertently and purposely.

Simply put, misinformation is information that is not based on facts or not true.

It started the argument by saying that "a functioning democracy relies on an educated and well-informed populace".

Hence, it argues that the main societal cost (or the harmful effects it has on society) of misinformation is:

"If a majority believes in something that is objectively incorrect, political and societal decisions will be made and accepted that may run counter to a society’s best interest"

In short, when people are believing in the wrong thing, and this belief is becoming the foundation of choices that are not only going to affect them but also the whole society (for example, like in presidential election!), there is a very high chance that they are going to make the wrong decision that will harm their larger surrounding.

But is deciding something based on false information is worse than deciding based on nothing at all?

Lewandowsky stated that misinformation is different from ignorance, or the absence of relevant knowledge; and yes, believing in misinformation is more harmful than not having any knowledge.

This is because when people know that they don't have the relevant knowledge to make decision, they will revert to simple heuristics. And most of the time, those heuristics can actually work surprisingly well.

One key point that make ignorance less harmful is that when people make decisions based on heuristic, it is easier to correct because people would have relatively low level of confidence in those decisions. However, decision made based on misinformation tend to be "held strongly and with (perhaps infectious) conviction".

The arguments in the paper is presented in several points (I will cover each point in different posting):

Origins of Misinformation: that explores the mechanisms in society that could be the source of misinformation that we come across on daily basis.

Individual-level Cognitive Processes involved in Acquisition and Persistence of Misinformation: that explores the thought-processes happening in our heads that make us internalize the misinformation and let it persist.

The Continued Influence Effect, when Retractions Fail to Eliminate the Influence of Misinformation: that explores why retractions or clarification at times fail to make us let go of the misinformation and accept the newly introduced true/factual information.

Reducing the Impact of Misinformation: that explores how to reduce the impact of misinformation in individual level and then in society.

Debiasing in an Open Society. Recommendations for the Practitioners: practical how-to for those trying to communicate the right information to public.

I guess this is quite a relevant information to really dig in, especially when the time to vote for our next leader is approaching fast (like, really fast). And we can't let misinformation be the based of how people choose who they're going to vote for in the election.

[smitasjahputri]

On Political Black Campaign and Why Does It Persist on People's Minds

2014 is surely an important year for Indonesia as right now we’re in the middle of the legislative and presidential election period.

And what can be more interesting to observe during the campaigning period –especially with the Presidential Election drawing near (31 more days, now!) (and, yes, I am counting it down)—other than the notorious happenings of black and negative campaigning.

These practices are, of course, not new and somewhat expected, but as the political battlefield is now also moving into the social media sphere, things might have been stepped up a notch.

For the past few months now, I have been doing quite a few of political reports at work, largely based on social media (mainly, Twitter) data and I can safely say that I am witnessing firsthand how people are reacting towards the rather undignified way of political campaign.

Since I’m not at any liberty at disclosing my company (or clients’) data, let me just illustrate how big the conversation is regarding black/negative campaign by this Topsy graph:

More than 60K of tweets are generated mentioning either “black campaign” or “negative campaign” in a month-- that is not a small number. Also, the graph shows that the number of tweets generated daily mentioning those terms are increasing especially in the last couple of weeks, as the discussion on the presidential candidates got even more heated up.

For the sake of being in the same framework, I would just take a moment to highlight the difference in the definition of black vs. negative campaign.

Black campaign is

false information and material that purports to be from a source on one side of a conflict, but is actually from the opposing side. It is typically used to vilify, embarrass or misrepresent the enemy.

Meanwhile, negative campaign is

trying to win an advantage by referring to negative aspects of an opponent or of a policy rather than emphasizing one's own positive attributes or preferred policies.

So, for example if you say that a candidate’s failure in his marriage and divorced status (fact) as an indicator that he is a bad leader, that is a negative campaign. But if you said that a candidate is of a certain race, religion, or ethnic group that he is not (false) in order for him to lose support from certain group, then you are engaging in a black campaign.

*(pardon me for using Wikipedia as the source, but lets just start with the information that is more likely being used by the majority)

Although if you look into the conversation regarding negative/black campaign what you're likely to see is criticism about the practices, other thing that is frequently being voiced out about such practices is of concern that people actually believe in these false or irrelevant information.

What really fascinates (and worries) me is that some of the rumors and black campaigns are so obvious in their lies, and yet, people still believe them anyway. Even worse, sometimes when clarification has been issued, people don’t seem to internalize the new fact as truth and continue to hold on to the lies or misinformation.

Of course this is worrying, especially when the lies would be affecting the way people choose who they're going to vote for.

So I did a little research and came across an article by Vox, “How Politics Makes Us Stupid”. The article’s argument revolve around the work of Yale Law professor Dan Kahan and his team that dwells on the question: “why isn’t good evidence more effective in resolving political debates?”

His findings suggest that when it comes to political beliefs, people weren’t reasoning to get the right answer; they were reasoning to get the answer that they wanted to be right.

This seemed depressing of course, as it indicates how irrational people can be when it comes to processing evidence that may go against their political beliefs.

However, he also added that:

“Most of the time, people are perfectly capable of being convinced by the best evidence.

Rather, our reasoning becomes rationalizing when we’re dealing with questions where the answers could threaten our tribe — or at least our social standing in our tribe. And in those cases, we’re being perfectly sensible when we fool ourselves.

We react to threatening information by mobilizing our intellectual artillery to destroy it.”

He described this phenomenon with a theory called Identity-Protective Cognition:

“As a way of avoiding dissonance and estrangement from valued groups, individuals subconsciously resist factual information that threatens their defining values." Elsewhere, he puts it even more pithily: "What we believe about the facts," he writes, "tells us who we are." And the most important psychological imperative most of us have in a given day is protecting our idea of who we are, and our relationships with the people we trust and love.

In short, Kahan point of view stated that one of the basic reason people believe in something that is untrue, especially in political frame, is that they are trying to protect their identity as a part of larger group they identify themselves with.

For example, if you identify yourself as a religious person, and then you encounter an (actually questionable) information about one of the presidential candidate being not so religious (lets say, some people said that he never prays) and you believe in that information for several reasons (e.g. he is not coming from a religious political party).

Even if later on you encounter another information (like a photograph of the candidate perform a religious rituals) you will find it hard to change your belief about him not being religious.

Instead of changing your views about him (like, well, he might be quite religious, I mean, look, he prays!), you might even start to rationalize and make up stories that would help you holding on to your previous beliefs (Like, no! How can it possible be that someone from non religious political party can be classified as pious? It cannot be possible! This must be just for show to gain support from people like me.)

Sounds familiar?

An older 2012 piece published in Psychology Today blog by Douglas LaBier, Ph.D., “Why You're Likely to Believe Political Lies” also ponder on the same question: what happens within our minds and emotions that make us receptive to lies, and then resistant to information that exposes the truth?

For this article, the main argument is based on a study led by Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Western Australia. (I will cover the study in detail for the next post because it is such a long read, loaded with a lot of information, but fun to devour, anyway).

But the main insights that he had from the study findings are:

First, processing information takes a lot of mental work. Hence it is easier to simply accept some information as true if you don’t have any pressing interest on it, rather than to really asses it with critical mindset.

“Weighing the plausibility and the source of a message is cognitively more difficult than simply accepting that the message is true -- it requires additional motivational and cognitive resources.”

Second, information will be easily accepted by truth if it fits with other things that you already believe, have more coherence in the story, as well as perceived to be coming from credible source.

Lastly, LaBier concluded:

“it's not just a matter of cognitive factors that make one receptive to lies or resistant to acknowledging the truth. It's one's entire psychology. That is, many emotional needs or conflicts may fuel one's cognitive, conscious beliefs and attitudes. And the latter may only tighten and become more deeply entrenched when challenged.”