Not Born Yesterday

by Hugo Mercier

In some cases belief and action, even costly action, go hand

  in hand: rumors of atrocities committed by the local minority

  and attacks on that minority, bogus medical theories and harm-

  ful medical practices, excessive flattery of a ruler and complete

  obedience to them. Then, by and large, the beliefs follow the be-

  hav ior, rather than the other way around. People who want to

  commit atrocities look for the moral high ground. Doctors like

  their therapies to be backed up by theories. The po liti cal condi-

  tions that make it a smart move to obey an autocrat also encourage

  sycophancy.

  Many mistaken but culturally successful ideas serve the in-

  terests of those who hold them. People appear more compe-

  tent by spreading rumors about exaggerated threats. They

  appear less irrational or immoral by justifying their actions. They

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  credibly communicate their desire to belong to a given group

  by expressing absurd or odious views that antagonize every-

  body else. Professing false beliefs doesn’t need to be irrational,

  not by a long shot.

  Gullible about Gullibility?

  If people are not gullible, why have scholars and laypeople

  through the ages, from Plato to Marx, claimed they were? It is

  often pointed out to me that there seems to be a contradiction

  between claiming that people are not gullible and saying they

  wrongly believe others gullible: Isn’t the spread of this miscon-

  ception a sign of gullibility? In fact, the success of the idea that

  people are gullible can be explained in the same way as other

  popu lar mistaken views.

  Like most successful rumors, stories about gullibility tend to

  be false, but intuitively compel ing. Those who transmit such sto-

  ries can score reputation points, as the stories often bear on

  threats: that words quickly flashed on a cinema screen can con-

  trol our be hav ior, that charismatic leaders can turn a tame flock

  into a bloodthirsty crowd.

  Consider the striking crowds in late nineteenth- century

  France. Out of several hundred demonstrations, the strikers

  caused only one casualty. Yet it is this unique episode that Émile

  Zola dramatized in his novel Germinal, turning it into the grue-

  some scene of an angry female crowd castrating their hapless

  victim. This choice is all the more revealing in that Zola actually

  sided with the workers. Despite his sympathies, Zola de cided to

  portray a mob running amok in the most sensationalist way: it

  made a better story than peaceful demonstrators. Ironically,

  Zola’s work later influenced crowd psychologists, who took

  t he c a se a g a ins t g ul l ib il i t y 263

  Germinal as a faithful description of crowd be hav ior, using it to

  condemn the strikers.8

  As a result of intuitive biases in what we pay attention to, re-

  ports of gullibility are likely to become culturally successful,

  even if they are wildly unrepresentative. It is easier to write a

  newspaper article about someone who lost their life savings to

  a Nigerian scam than about the mil ions of people who laughed

  at the e- mails. Global rumors— about politicians, celebrities,

  major events— tend to be false, while local rumors, such as those

  about our jobs, tend to be accurate. News outlet are, logically

  enough, only interested in the former (even if only to rebuke

  them).

  As is true of most misconceptions, beliefs in widespread gull-

  ibility are largely reflective. Even the most cynical observer,

  complaining of (what they believe are) gullible citizens voting

  against their own interests, or gullible consumers buying prod-

  ucts they don’t want, wouldn’t ground their be hav ior on these

  beliefs by, say, attempting to talk random strangers into giving

  them money. The same is true of specific gullibility- related scares.

  The 1950s panic about subliminal influence didn’t stop people

  from going to the movies. Rumored uses of brainwashing by the

  New Religious Movements didn’t prompt a proportionate legal

  or popu lar backlash.

  Again, like many other misconceptions, the idea that people

  are gul ible provides post hoc rationalizations for actions or ideas

  that have other motivations. Until the Enlightenment, accusa-

  tions of gullibility were routinely used to justify an iniquitous

  status quo—as it so happens, mostly by people who benefited

  from that status quo, or who sucked up to those who did. The

  masses, these scholars claimed, couldn’t be trusted with po liti cal

  power, as they would be promptly manipulated by cunning

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  demagogues bent on wrecking the social order. As noted earlier, the

  perceived danger of demagogues was then “po liti cal philosophy’s

  central reason for skepticism about democracy.”9 Supposed

  widespread gullibility is still recruited today as an argument

  against demo cratic power, for example, by Jason Brennan in his

  book Against Democracy.10

  Ironically, scholars on the other side of the po liti cal spectrum,

  who defend the people’s right to a po liti cal voice, have also

  claimed widespread gullibility— not because they feared the

  population would revolt but because they had to explain why it

  hadn’t already revolted (or, more generally, why it makes the

  “wrong” po liti cal choices). Enlightenment writers who despised

  the Catholic Church had to explain why its yoke had been do-

  cilely borne for centuries (or so they thought). Rousseau tried

  to absolve the people of any taint, preferring to see the masses

  as gullible rather than evil: “The people are never corrupted,

  though often deceived, and it is only then that they seem to wil

  what is evil.”11

  One factor that might explain why a belief in widespread gull-

  ibility has proven so successful is quite specific to that belief:

  the temptation to reverse engineer the tremendous efforts de-

  voted to mass persuasion in our socie ties. We are inundated with

  a barrage of advertising, po liti cal messages, articles, posts on so-

  cial media tel ing us what to drink, eat, buy, feel, think. It can be

  hard to conceive that such massive efforts don’t have a commen-

  surate massive effect on people. However, mass persuasion at-

  tempts might be worth the effort even if the audiences are largely

  skeptical.

  Propaganda, for instance, might not convince many people of

  its content, while still sending a clear signal: that the regime is

  strong enough to impose its voice. All the way to the top of the

  t he c a se a g a ins t g ul l ib il i t y 265

  one- hundred- foot- tall Column of Trajan spirals a bas- relief de-

  picting the victories of Emperor Trajan in his Eastern Eu ro pean

  wars. It looks like propaganda aimed at making sure every Roman

  citizen knew the detail of Trajan’s many victories. However, as

  historian Paul Veyne noted, most of the column’s bas- reliefs are

  simply too high for anyone to see clearly.12 The message sent by

  the column isn’t what it depi
cts but its very existence, stating loud

  and clear that the regime is rich and power ful enough to erect

  such an edifice.

  Or consider a con temporary example. Rus sian president

  Vladimir Putin is known to support the ice hockey team SKA

  Saint Petersburg.13 Because the team nearly always wins, this

  could be seen as a propaganda attempt, with Putin basking in the

  success of his team. However, it is clear to every one that the SKA

  Saint Petersburg wins largely because it can break all the rules:

  the team doesn’t re spect the salary cap, has its pick of the best

  players, and is blatantly favored by the referees. The message isn’t

  that Putin is good at picking hockey teams but that he is power-

  ful enough to intimidate every one into letting his team win, an

  intrinsically credible message.14

  Even when mass persuasion bears on the message itself, it can

  reach its goal without entailing any gullibility on the part of the

  audience. Many of the products we buy exist in virtually identi-

  cal versions— diff er ent brands of soda, toothpaste, detergent,

  cigarettes, milk. In these conditions, it is only normal that our

  minds should respond to minor nudges: the position on the

  shelf, a tiny discount, or even an appealing ad. Shifts between

  these essentially identical products may be of no import for con-

  sumers, while making a huge difference for companies. Some

  ads can be cost- effective without any genuine persuasion hav-

  ing taken place.

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  My Mistake, Your Prob lem

  I have argued that, by and large, popu lar misconceptions carry

  little cost for those who hold them, or even serve their social

  goals. Does this mean, then, that it is not worth trying to refute

  the false beliefs that spread in spite of our open vigilance mecha-

  nisms? That—as a rule— they carry little or no cost for those

  who hold them doesn’t mean they can’t be terrible for others.

  Before launching the Great Leap Forward, Mao had little un-

  derstanding of agriculture. He wasn’t a farmer relying on his

  knowledge of plants to feed his family. And so his mechanisms

  of open vigilance easily went astray, making him accept recom-

  mendations simply because they were consistent with his po liti-

  cal beliefs. Inspired by the Rus sian biologist Trofim Lysenko,

  Mao claimed that plants are like people in the ideal communist

  state: those of the same class don’t compete with each other;

  instead, “with com pany they grow easily, when they grow to-

  gether they will be more comfortable.”15 This led Mao to advocate

  close cropping: sowing seeds much closer than farmers

  throughout China had been doing for millennia.

  Mao’s view on farming had dire consequences— not for him,

  though, but for the population forced to put them into practice.

  Close cropping, along with the other counterproductive tech-

  niques Mao advocated, led to drastically reduced grain yields.

  The worst famine of history ensued, kil ing more than forty mil-

  lion Chinese peasants. Yet Mao stayed in power until his death,

  in spite of the destruction his asinine ideas had wreaked.

  Obviously, the best remedy for this type of disaster is not to

  improve the critical thinking skil s of ruthless dictators, but to

  get rid of ruthless dictators altogether—or, more generally, to

  create better feedback loops between decision makers and the

  t he c a se a g a ins t g ul l ib il i t y 267

  effects of their decisions. For all the propaganda and the apparent

  adulation of Mao, few Chinese peasants would have voted— had

  they been given the chance— for the guy who had forced close

  cropping on them. As one of them put it: “We knew about the

  situation, but no one dared to say anything. If you said any-

  thing, they would beat you up. What could we do?”16

  We Can Do Better

  Turning to demo cratic socie ties, I have argued that po liti cal

  elites’ influence on public opinion is largely innocuous, as it

  mostly affects issues on which people have no strong opinion to

  begin with and are, for them, of little consequence. For instance,

  in the United States the tradition among po liti cal leaders left and

  right ever since the Cold War had been to take a strongly critical

  stance of Rus sia. In his early presidency Donald Trump, a Re-

  publican, partly broke with this tradition, to the point that he

  appeared ready to take the word of Vladimir Putin over that of

  his own intel igence community.17 Trump’s actions led some Re-

  publicans (but no Demo crats) to develop a more positive view

  of Putin, in a typical case of citizens moving toward their favor-

  ite po liti cal leader’s opinion.18

  For those who developed a more positive opinion of Putin,

  these views had no personal consequences. Yet this shift could

  in due course influence policy. The work of po liti cal scientist

  James Stimson (among others) shows that politicians respond

  to public opinion, being more likely to support policies fitting

  the popu lar wil .19 But if the politicians are the ones shaping pub-

  lic opinion in the first place, doesn’t this mean they have essen-

  tially carte blanche to enact any policy they like, first by creating

  public support, then by acting on the basis of this support?

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  Fortunately, a politician’s job isn’t quite so simple, for two

  reasons. First, in competitive democracies, citizens heed the

  opinions of diff er ent leaders, who hold diff er ent views, pulling

  the population’s opinions in diff er ent directions. Second, on

  most issues a segment of the electorate does have the means

  and the motivation to have informed opinions. These people

  don’t simply follow what ever their party leader says. Instead,

  they form their own opinion on the basis of their personal

  experiences, what they see in the news, what they read in

  newspapers, and so forth. The views of these informed citizens are

  the signal in the noise of public opinion, and they largely guide

  its movements.20

  Trump has been famously tough on immigration. However,

  far from following his lead, members of his party have devel-

  oped more lenient views on the topic. Compared with 2015, in

  2018 Republicans were less likely to want legal immigration to

  be decreased.21 These shifts are explained by what po liti cal sci-

  entists call the thermostatic model of public opinion. When

  politicians veer too far in a given direction, people who pay

  attention express their disagreement by moving their opinions

  the other way.22

  It is quite plausible that the movements in public opinion

  influencing policy are largely shaped by informed individuals

  who don’t simply follow their party’s lead. The lack of effort

  by other citizens, then, is not disastrous, but it still reveals

  some tantalizing possibilities. If more voters were as reactive

  as the informed minority to actual events, shifts in public

  opinion would be faster and stronger and wo
uld have more

  impact on policy. But mass persuasion is hard, for better or

  worse. Getting people who know and care very little about

  politics to abandon the easy strategy of following their party’s

  lead is not easy.

  t he c a se a g a ins t g ul l ib il i t y 269

  Fragile Chains of Trust

  The take- home message of this book is: influencing people isn’t

  too easy, but too hard. Most of the misconceptions we have ex-

  plored persist because people refuse to believe those who know

  better. False rumors and conspiracy theories survive long after

  they have been debunked. Quack doctors and flat- earthers ig-

  nore all the scientific evidence thrown at them.

  Take anti- vaxxers. If we assume an intuitive reaction against

  vaccination, the issue with anti- vaxxers isn’t that they are not

  vigilant enough but that they are not open enough. People who

  have access to the relevant medical information, and who still

  refuse basic vaccines, are failing to put their trust in the right

  place— medical professionals, the scientific consensus— and to

  be convinced by sound arguments.23 This is what we must work

  on. Phar ma ceu ti cal companies engage in a variety of practices

  that provide grounds for mistrust, from failing to report unsuc-

  cessful clinical trials to buying doctors’ influence.24 Cleaning up

  their acts would help allay some of the mistrust. It is also impor-

  tant to properly engage with anti- vaxxers. Unfortunately, most

  people have only limited argumentative tools to do so.25 Those

  who find the right arguments, such as experts who take the time

  to engage vaccine doubters in conversation, are more likely to be

  convincing.26

  The same logic applies to other domains. As many find con-

  spiracy theories intuitively compel ing, attempts to shut off the

  channels through which conspiracy theories spread cannot eradi-

  cate them. Even the Chinese regime’s tight control over the

  media doesn’t stop conspiracy theories from flourishing.27 The

  best way to curb the spread of conspiracy theories, surely, is to

  have a trustworthy government with strong laws against corrup-

  tion, conflicts of interests, regulatory capture, and so forth.28

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  This is, presumably, why conspiracy theories are less prevalent

  in Norway than in Pakistan.29

  The example of science shows how the foundations of an in-