If True

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COMMENTARY

It would be a stretch to say that the democratization of information has led to a more enlightened public. We are a reactive bunch these days. I think (hope) most of us would acknowledge that the polarization of opinion and decreased ability to listen to those with whom we disagree is not a good thing for our world.

The past few years we have been bombarded with “unsought” information through social media, through ads. It is directly marketed to us, with varying agendas—political, economic, and more. Our brains can process millions of bits of information each second, but consciously, we only process a fraction of this information. We often viscerally, physically, and emotionally react (and decide) before we think. From an evolutionary standpoint, this was a survival tactic. However, the utilization of this “adaptive unconscious”¹ in making snap decisions can be biased and flawed.

We are being primed by a sense of urgency and a fear of missing out. And now that sold data (which we have “agreed to,” in order to use a site, an app, etc) includes our profiles and our interests, the priming increases. In the online world, if you click on a particular item/topic, you can be assured to see some variation of that for an extended period of time and across multiple devices used. And, with additional worry, higher level neuromarketing platforms are not far away, where the device includes you.

If you had a small political interest before, you will be urged to have a greater one. If you are not yet outraged, you will be convinced to be. Misinformation, disinformation. And now we have artificial intelligence, which can be a remarkable tool for good, but can also allow for the manufacturing of disinformation on a level never before seen.

The quickest and most effective impact of marketing is not via our higher order brains, but our more primitive ones. However, we are not always primitive responders. Over hundreds of thousands of years, we grew our forebrains, allowing us to allegedly be able to make wise decisions, at times requiring the dampening of our dopamine reward system.

Kahneman, in Thinking, Fast and Slow,² described 2 systems of thinking. System 1, the fast-thinking mode, occurs without effort, with decisions filtered through heuristics, rules of thumb. System 2 is the deliberate, slow-thinking mode. And, clearly, System 2 thinking is more malleable.

The world rarely comes to us with “trigger warnings” and though we cannot always put the genie back in the bottle (ie, the adaptive unconscious response), we need not feel completely resigned to System 1’s control. While intuitive, it is also defined by learned associations and certain skills. As such, there are new associations and skills we can learn, and some we can unlearn or at least pivot from. According to Kahneman, “System 2 has some ability to change the way System 1 works, by programming the normally automatic functions of attention and memory.” Attention can be refocused.

One way of changing the System 1 thinking according to Malcolm Gladwell³ and others is to be aware of our biases and to practice responding to news/information. Rehearsal, imagination. Clearly another way is to be aware of our behaviors—our choices of when and where we click.

This assumes that we recognize something about ourselves that we might want to adjust—such as moving from being an automatic believer to a skeptic, in the best sense of the word. While Thesaurus.com notes that a skeptic is a person who is “leery, unbelieving,” with synonyms including “agnostic, dissenter, cynic, doubter, pessimist, questioner,” I believe the latter is most accurate, and least negative. It is good to be a questioner, a critical thinker. Such change takes discipline.

It is not feasible nor healthy to be continually hypervigilant. So, being selective of areas in which we might want to pivot, such as politics, could be a start. Or perhaps that is too broad; maybe you want to try to change your focus within a certain area of politics. How do we do this?

Robert Fulghum wrote the wildly popular, All I Really Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten.⁴ In selected areas, we can get back to basics and learn to stop and look both ways before we proceed. One tool is Mike Caulfield’s SIFT method⁵ for dealing with potential misinformation:

Stop before you react/share

Investigate the source

Find Better Coverage

Trace the original context

Before acting on something sensational, (message to my amygdala—not everything is breaking news…) you can take a breath, stop, and say, “If true…” As in, if I see something that is likely to elicit a response of outrage, rather than respond, “That’s horrible!” I can say, “If true, that would be horrible.” Or “That image is very disturbing. I wonder if it is real.” I can also say, “If not true, I am upset at that fake and misleading attempt.”

The same if I hear or see something that would prime me to respond in a favorable manner—rather than jump and say, “That’s great!” I could say, “If true, that would be great.” Really, what we are doing is dialing it back, acknowledging that our emotional response and default brain has already responded before our cognitive awareness, but owning our response.

This may not free all of us from our addiction to outrage or confirmation biases but could afford some harm reduction. Giving pause may lessen the margins of polarization, might reduce our likelihood of being complicit in sharing misinformation, and could also give ourselves back some quality time. Compromise, either with others or within our own brain systems, can be a healthy thing for all.

Dr McLean is an Associate Dean and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

References

1. Wegner DM. The Illusion of Conscious Will. MIT Press; 2003.

2. Kahneman D. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 2011.

3. Gladwell M. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Little, Brown and Co; 2005.

4. Fulghum R. All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things. Ivy; 1988.

5. Caulfield M. SIFT (The Four Moves). Hapgood. June 19, 2019. Accessed October 17, 2024.https://hapgood.us/2019/06/19/sift-the-four-moves/