2010+Unspun+Chapter+4-+Precis+and+Powerpoint+Period+2

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Precis

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It is interesting to observe the curious tendency of people to act irrational at times. Consider a situation that many have encountered in the past—you are a devout believer in a belief, whether it is religious, political, or any other categorization. After basing many of your actions in this personal belief, someone presents you with evidence that this belief is illogical or contradicts reason. Hypothetically, you would assume that a logical person would, upon discovery of this evidence, reconsider their original ideas and approach their beliefs with a new perspective. However, scientific research has shown that the human brain actually avoids this supposedly logical plan of action. This research has scanned the human brain and seen its unusual reaction to contradictory evidence. One of the most well known examples in the psychology community of this scientific observation is the 50-year old story of the cult that refused to abandon its belief in UFO rescue.=====

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The cult, led by a woman named Marian Keech, had supposedly relayed a warning from beings on planet Clarion that predicted a flood destroying north America, and that Mrs. Keech’s followers would be spared. These believers were so devoted as to give up their possessions to board the alien spaceship. However, they were surprised to find that on the date predicted by the aliens to bring floods, no flood or alien spaceship appeared. Even with such strong evidence to the contrary, the cult believed that their faith had brought a miracle and stopped the cataclysm, sparking their fervor to spread the word and gain more followers.=====

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Leon Festinger, the psychologist that infiltrated this UFO cult, explains that people find such hard evidence painful to conceive. Of course, this particular instance represents an extreme case of the psychological phenomenon of cognitive dissonance, but it clearly illustrates how people will follow illogical paths to keep from admitting their continuing ignorance.=====

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Cognitive dissonance still permeates throughout our society in modern times. On Saturday, May 13, 2006, online contributor Jason Leopold posted a story to political website truthout.org purporting that George Bush’s top advisor, Karl Rove, was indicted on counts of perjury and lying to CIA investigators. It was also announced that the indictment would only be officially revealed to the public after another week. Far-left readers of truthout.org praised the news without a shadow of a doubt. However, as the story advanced, Rove presented evidence that contradicted the story. Truthout refused to take down the story and its followers remained vehement. After a week with no indictment, the readers’ faith grew even stronger just to avoid being proven wrong.=====

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The effects of cognitive dissonance, however, stretch far beyond politics. In everyday events, people also show a curious tendency to favor evidence that supports their existing beliefs. The human brain will selectively filter out strong, credited evidence that refutes their initial thoughts and seek out proof, even that which is weak or discredited, that can bring new support to their beliefs. By the same token, we more closely scrutinize contradictory evidence and hold no restrictions on convenient information. Another aspect of cognitive dissonance that scientists have explored shows that the human brain most strongly feels a sense of confidence when we are actually most incorrect. Over time, we ignore more evidence that contradicts our initial thoughts and our beliefs become more deep-seeded. This evolves into what can most simply be described as wishful thinking. Humans will continue to develop an irrational thought pattern, conceiving ideas that any logical person would easily disprove, such as delusions of winning the lottery. Another perspective that psychologists have developed to describe this phenomenon is called the “pictures in our heads” trap. The information that we tend to favor creates a virtual picture in our minds, and ideas that disturb this picture tend to be disregarded by our brains. Unfortunately, this picture does not always match reality.=====

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Based on our dedication to an issue, the way we think and perceive the world around us can be drastically different. This theory applies in such a way that people do not purposely change their thoughts and actions, it happens on its own. This instance occurs in such a way that it is out of our control. Even though people that believe in the same causes have the same beliefs they do not perceive the same way as other people who also believe that cause.=====

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Studies have shown that people believe the different side of an issue physically see different things. Studies were done to see how the brain perceives sight in a certain situation and people with different beliefs actually had physically different brain activity. Another major component that changes perception and sight is that emotion becomes stronger pushing logic out of the mind.=====

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Researchers looked for trends in the data only to realize that what we see and think is extremely slanted based on our field of experience. Whenever we see media that agrees with our opinions we assume it to be true creating a lack of neutral opinion. The reversal in roles also shows why we reject ideas. Media that opposes our beliefs causes us to find a reason to reject the media whether the media is faulty or not. This effect shows us not only the way we perceive media but it also lays the path for showing us how we use reason to form arguments. Researchers asked people in a study to develop an argument supporting their issue and surprisingly all the logic supported their side of the issue. The people in the study did not even consider the opposite side of the argument. These people shockingly developed three times more reasons supporting their idea whereas they only developed one logical reason supporting the other side of the argument.=====

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Even in major debates and arguments people only tend to think about reasons supporting only one side of the issue. Another interesting fact in myside bias is that the massive majority of people considered one-sided thinking to be better the two-sided thinking. They would even support the other side of the issue if they felt the argument supporting the other side only had one-sided thinking. Civilians aren’t the only people that fall victim to these biases, even highly educated scholars get affected by this trap. Once someone is aware of these biases it becomes easier for them notice this characteristic in others. This bias hints at why we as a society perceive certain things the way we do.=====

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Certain evidence proves that the more misinformed we are, the more we try to persuade that we are correct. People who hold the most inaccurate beliefs actually have the highest confidence in their beliefs even though they are wrong. Many of these people largely believed that their thoughts were somewhat correct even though they had no valid reasoning or proof. People who suffer from the “I know I’m right” syndrome who know that they are unsure of their answers are the most likely candidates to change their way of thinking.=====

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This misinformation effect causes us to exaggerate the differences in our way of thinking so that we can make ourselves feel more comfortable with our logical reasoning even if our reasoning was faulty or incomplete. People do not want to stay up late at night and worry about our reasoning. So, we create this habit to prevent us from exploring our faults. This also causes us to have a difficult time while changing our opinions.=====

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All of these theories, effects, and syndromes are caused by mental shortcuts. We tend to take a break while thinking so we fall victim to these different effects. While we aren’t thinking we fall into a type of daydreaming where we do not pay attention to what other people are saying. Marketers take advantage of our “daydreaming” state to capture us and persuade us to buy their product. The main idea learned from these effects is that we should pay attention to watch out for unimportant and nonexistent reasons and to make decisions while we are alert and not daydreaming.=====