Ask: what are my beliefs about this topic?

• How are your beliefs affecting your reaction?
• Be especially vigilant if you feel emotional or defensive or argumentative as you process (mine) the information.
• Your beliefs, viewpoints, preferences have a very powerful influence on your thoughts and actions. They affect your information choices, what you pay attention to, and what you tend to believe, and even whom you like. Do your best to know what your biases, attitudes and beliefs are and how they are affecting your life and learning.

Plan to look for views that are different from your own before you decide what to believe or act on.

Watch for emotion-rousing techniques that will hijack your brain.

• You are both an emotional and rational being…
  • You’ll react negatively to anything that arouses your disgust or fear – including fear of losing something.
  • You’ll feel more positive when something is connected to one of your desires or aspirations – or confirms and supports your self-image.
  • You’ll be attracted to bizarre, unusual, surprising information
• Don’t be lured by the glitter of “fool’s gold!” Information is power – everyone uses it to both educate and influence. It’s up to you to detect when -- in order to influence -- a source uses misinformation, disinformation, or brain hijacking techniques to get your attention and support.
• Be alert to the methods people are using to manipulate you – as well as to your own emotions and reactions

Watch for attempts to reduce the amount of thinking work you have to do.

• You’ll be attracted to and more likely believe
  • Simplified messages and conclusions
  • Personal stories and visual images rather than statistics
  • Information that confirms your current beliefs, stereotypes, and what you know
  • Information that is repeated – and therefore seems reliable

Repetition

• The more you are exposed to something, the truer it seems.

Emotional weighting

• Your brain pays more attention to danger, things that disgust you, and losses, than to positive information or opportunities for gain. So, when information arouses any strong feeling, beware – especially negative emotions. Presenting opposing candidates in a way that causes fear or disgust – two powerful manipulators -- is a favorite distortion method of politicians and advertisers.

Oversimplification.

• Simplicity is often good. But sometimes cause-effect relationships are not obvious – think about the weather, or a bridge collapse -- many forces may be at work. Your brain likes simplicity -- doesn’t have to work so hard to comprehend it. Be willing to spend the energy to go deeper.

Stories over statistics.

• Your brain loves stories and examples but may see one example as a universal truth when it is not. Scientists call this “base-rate neglect”

Pairing

• For example, a beautiful women paired with cars, images of success or increased wealth or health paired with a product, an ominous background paired with an image of a political opponent.

Confirmation Bias

• You will look for, pay attention to, and believe information that supports views you already have and ignore or devalue information that disproves it or supports other views. It takes more brain energy and even humility to change a point of view, so your brain and your self-image will settle for the familiar and stay stuck. As Paul Simon sang, we tend to “hear what we want to hear and disregard the rest”

Novelty.

• Surprising information wakes up the brain – captures it. But it may not be true. Watch out.

False choices.

• Remember when your parents said, “do you want soup or a sandwich for lunch?” It seemed you had only two choices. Really you could have asked for cereal. Often your information sources will make it appear that you only have two choices. When you see this, ask yourself if there are other options!

Availability

• Generalizing that because something is happening now its incidence is increasing (e.g., crime). Look for reliable statistics!