Jon Stewart – Jason Hensel

The reason people believe misinformation is because they’re lazy, according to new research from the University of Western Australia. In “Misinformation and its Correction: Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing,” psychological scientist and study co-author Stephan Lewandowsky says that misinformation can cause a lot of damage at a societal level and a global level. As reported by the Association for Psychological Science, though, shedding false beliefs takes work.

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. If the topic isn’t very important to you or you have other things on your mind, misinformation is more likely to take hold.

And when we do take the time to thoughtfully evaluate incoming information, there are only a few features that we are likely to pay attention to: Does the information fit with other things I believe in? Does it make a coherent story with what I already know? Does it come from a credible source? Do others believe it?

Misinformation is especially sticky when it conforms to our preexisting political, religious, or social point of view. Because of this, ideology and personal worldviews can be especially difficult obstacles to overcome.

As I mentioned, laziness is the culprit here, and that’s okay. Personally, I’d rather watch The Daily Show than The O’Reilly Factor, because I know I’ll agree with its narrative more than the other. I also know, too, that I should expose myself to other viewpoints more than I do so that I can become better well-rounded and educated. However, I’m lazy. Plus, I find Jon Stewart funnier than Bill O’Reilly. I’m a sucker for comedy.

(Image via Flickr: jimjarmo / Creative Commons)

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The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are two shows I never miss. I think my obsessiveness of watching them is due to that completist personality I mentioned. Or maybe it’s because I’m a deep thinker.

Hey, I didn’t say it first–a University of Delaware assistant professor in communications did. Dannagal Young surveyed 398 undergraduate students about their views of 13 different TV genres. And she discovered “meaningful differences” in how people watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, finding that some viewers watch the show more for context than information or fun.

Such viewers exhibit high “need for cognition,” a psychological term used to describe people who engage in and enjoy arguments, ideas and the analysis of problems and their solutions.

“It’s not about capacity to think,” Young explains. “It’s about their enjoyment of thinking.”

Young feels that “such viewers are not just watching the show for different reasons; they’re likely experiencing different impacts as a result,” Artika Rangan Casini reported for UDaily.

“We know that the reasons people seek out information strongly affect the implications of those messages,” she says. “In this case, people coming to the show looking for satirical analysis of political information may exhibit more long-lasting shifts in attitude.”

All this talk about thinking reminds me of a Brecht quote: “Thinking is one of the chief pleasures of the human race.” And for me, so is watching Jon and Stephen deliver news in humorous ways.

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Jason Hensel

Why Misinformation Sticks

Daily Show Viewers Are Deep Thinkers