Millions of people didn’t buy into the propaganda right? So why did so many not fall for it? Look at the type of people who believed Russiagate. What do they have in common that the people who didn’t fall for it — not have?
This is on one level caused by the Herd Mentality. The Herd Mentality has been studied for a long time and has shown that many people tend to follow other people who confidently take the lead in something.
Researchers at Leeds University performed a group experiment where volunteers were told to randomly walk around a large hall without talking to each other. A select few were then given more detailed instructions on where to walk. The scientists discovered that people end up blindly following one or two instructed people who appear to know where they’re going. The results of this experiments showed that it only takes 5% of confident looking and instructed people to influence the direction of the 95% of people in the crowd and the 200 volunteers did this without even realizing it.
The Herd Mentality is especially prevalent upon people who have a strong Social Identity. Social Identity theory illuminates how people react or view the world influenced by their social identity.
Social identities are a valued aspect of the self, and people will sacrifice their pecuniary self-interest to maintain the self-perception that they belong to a given social group. Political partisans and fans of sports teams are reluctant to bet against the success of their party or team because of the diagnostic cost such a bet would incur to their identification with it. As a result, partisans and fans will reject even very favorable bets against identity-relevant desired outcomes. More than 45% of N.C.A.A. basketball and hockey fans, for example, turned down a free, real chance to earn $5 if their team lost its upcoming game.
People who place a lot of value on their Social Identity can more easily fall into the trap of Herd Mentality. Which is exactly what we saw occur with the types of people who were so invested in Russiagate. The initial propaganda came from leaders of the social groups they strongly identified with, i.e., celebrities of all types (media, politics, the arts). That in turn caused a Herd Mentality among them, leading to Confirmation Bias.
Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. Confirmation bias is of particular current interest because of the increasing polarisation between left-wing and right-wing political viewpoints, and the gullible acceptance of the current rapid spread of fake news.
But ultimately all these influences are secondary to the truth on how our mind functions. To understand, try to observe the thoughts in your mind by trying to detach from seeing your thoughts as an extension of your self. Try to observe your thoughts rather then identify with them. When “thoughts” are observed as being different from our self, as words imposed on our conscious awareness instead of originating from us, by that detached observation of thoughts/mind we can discover the truth of our existence. Our thoughts are not our creation.
If you think otherwise try to explain how to create a thought. You can’t. No one knows how thoughts occur. We experience thoughts without knowing how thoughts originate. We have the ability to simply observe the thoughts in our mind as the detached awareness or self. Just like right now — you can detach from the sense of identifying with the thoughts you hear as you read these words. As you read these words you hear these words as thoughts in your mind — but you are not creating the thought sound itself, It happens without you doing anything but reading. Thoughts simply appear in your mind as you read. Let’s try an experiment with thoughts to show you how different you are from your thoughts → pay attention to the sound of your thoughts in your mind as you read a question I will ask you. When I ask you a question listen for the answer and do nothing else — simply focus on listening and doing nothing else but listen after the question I ask. Ready? Here is the question: where were you born?
Where did the answer come from? What has the ability to understand the question and then deliver the answer as a thought sound in your mind to you while you do nothing but listen to a question you just read? Can brain cells observe reality? Can they analyse reality? Can cells understand reality intellectually? Can cells interact with word meanings and concepts, with grammar and language, on this platform, and then speak to you as if they are a living speaking person who can think, see, and speak? No cell can do any of that. But something just did that to you...
