The root of the problem lies in something called “meta-cognitive myopia”; that people seem alert to pick on “primary information,” like the claims of a politician that they helped a struggling community during a health crisis. But more “meta-information,” one that would help them detect whether this primary information is true in the first place, seems to be lost on us — fueling a truth bias.
“In hunter-gatherer societies, survival often depends on how people react to the evidence of their own senses, or even to signals that they receive from others. If you see a tiger chasing you, you had better run. And if your friends and neighbors are running, it makes sense to run too. There is much less urgency to picking up on signals about whether those signals are reliable,” Sunstein explained. Our default assumption then is most people are telling the truth — even if the context paints a different picture.
What makes falsehoods also believable is the absurdity of a lie in the first place. “It’s very complicated, the way we process information,” said Ron Riggio, an organizational psychology professor at Claremont McKenna College speaking broadly about the nature of lying. “It’s the politics of audacity. The more outrageous and audacious the lie is, the more people say ‘that’s got to be true because why would someone make something like that up?'” Think especially in terms of elected governments in charge of people’s well-being and social welfare: why would elected officials mislead billions of people? In December last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi valiantly claimed Goa came under Portugal’s rule when other parts of the country were ruled by the Mughals. This is as good as fiction — for Portuguese rule in Goa began in 1510 while the Mughal rule started in 1526.
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By Saumya Kalia, March 21, 2022
https://theswaddle.com/why-we-believe-people-in-power-even-when-they-lie/