For many years, the conventional wisdom was that only highly biased, less educated media consumers would put partisanship over truth—in other words, they would believe news that confirmed their worldview, regardless of whether it was true.
I wonder if there’s an evolutionary reason for this. It might have been beneficial when we lived in smaller tightnit groups. Being a part of the group was more beneficial for safety than the alternative, so we tended to hold the views of the group regardless of whether the views are correct or not. No way to test this unfortunately, and it’s kind of an armchair hypothesis, but it kind of makes sense.
It is and it applies at every level of social interactions. People will compromise their smaller, less important values as long as the main, currently most important facet remains the focus.
A clear example of this is the crazy/hot index. Both men and women ignore the failings of their chosen companion as long as the value of sex is greater than the suffering of all else combined.
I wonder if there’s an evolutionary reason for this. It might have been beneficial when we lived in smaller tightnit groups. Being a part of the group was more beneficial for safety than the alternative, so we tended to hold the views of the group regardless of whether the views are correct or not. No way to test this unfortunately, and it’s kind of an armchair hypothesis, but it kind of makes sense.
It is and it applies at every level of social interactions. People will compromise their smaller, less important values as long as the main, currently most important facet remains the focus.
A clear example of this is the crazy/hot index. Both men and women ignore the failings of their chosen companion as long as the value of sex is greater than the suffering of all else combined.
It sounded to me like people have become more distrustful towards news media. Seems understandable.