Why Are Conservatives More Susceptible to Believing Lies?

Comments

• gibmiser@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  No science behind this, but because their reality is based on them being a good guy in their mind. Simultaneously they are actually selfish but lie to themselves about that fact.

  Now when a fact comes along and points out they are being selfish, they will seek any information that will allow them to continue the selfish behavior.

  Tldr they lie to themselves so they can sleep at night.

  source

  • elav@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    In fact, there is a scientific explanation. The tonsils of the brain of conservative voters are approximately the size of a sesame seed, that is, slightly larger than those of progressive voters, according to a study published in the journal Cell Press iScience.

    The amygdala controls the perception and understanding of threats and uncertainty in the face of risk, so it makes a lot of sense that people more sensitive to these issues have a greater need for security, something that usually coincides with more conservative political ideas.

    The relationship between the size of the amygdala and conservatism also depended on the political party with which the individual was identified.

    source

    • gibmiser@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Tonsils of the brain?

      source

      • -> View More Comments
  • atempuser23@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    [deleted]

    source

    • gibmiser@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Kond of you to assume I know how to read

      source
• wfh@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Because it’s a cult.

  Fascism and religion run on the same hardware. The paramount values are obedience to a higher power, and the core belief in the scriptures/propaganda.

  This is why centrist politics never work. Why make a step towards them when they will never make a step towards you?

  source

  • ickplant@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Anyone who believes in the fairy tale of religion is going to be more susceptible to other lies.

    source
  • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    But that doesn’t explain why some people are way more susceptible to being stuck in a cult than others.

    Personally I think it’s genetic. It’s some kind of brain feature that leads to people having beliefs that are extremely hard to change. I say this is a feature, not a defect, because you only have to go back a few hundred years to find a society where not having the right belief system can quickly lead to ostracization and death.

    It’s a survival tool that has suddenly found itself in the modern informational environment and it can’t cope. See it in action and it’s incredibly tragic.

    source
• bricklove@midwest.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  My parents are those college educated conservatives and their mental gymnastics are Olympic level. They also donate to charities and do volunteer work like meals on wheels. They don’t make any sense to me.

  source

  • ameancow@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    We don’t pay nearly enough attention to how flawed we are as a species, how easily we can discard reason and logic to validate feelings of fear, insecurity or shame, which is what drives conservatism, not reasoned arguments or fiscal responsibility.

    When you discover in life that your brain does that trick, where it will ruminate on the things you feel and it’s not required at all to make sense or figure out things with logic, you can become free from at least one of your major flaws, which is how we tend to justify our feelings with irrational rumination. Learning to stop telling yourself stories will save your mental health. Smart people sometimes have as hard of a time as stupid people in this regard, because a smart person is equally likely to think their own rumination is factual and reasonable and are less likely to be self-critical.

    source

    • shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      “Brains are survival engines, not truth detectors. If self-deception promotes fitness, the brain lies. Stops noticing—irrelevant things. Truth never matters. Only fitness. By now you don’t experience the world as it exists at all. You experience a simulation built from assumptions. Shortcuts. Lies. Whole species is agnosiac by default.”

      ― Peter Watts, Blindsight

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• Scott_of_the_Arctic@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Because being conservative is directly caused by being a gullible moron.

  source

  • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Can confirm, many “conservative atheists” I knew in the beginning of 2010’s (they almost all became christian if they didn’t leave conservatism itself) were conservative due to some combination of “we need conservative representation within atheists” and the “they told me I would eventually grow out from liberalism, I’m just doing the unavoidable”.

    source
  • ameancow@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Yah even as a man of science and research, even I got about 3/4 through the article and started rolling my eyes.

    This is a lot of over-explanation for the common state of stupidity that comes from having shit parents, shitty school and living in a poor, shitty area. Some people rise above their adversity and insecurity, through whatever arcane and secret paths one’s thought streams follow, others become defined by their stupidity and fear and insecurity and find a community that lets them validate such feelings.

    You’re never going to get rid of the stupid segment of your population, and in fact if you want to mitigate the damage they can do, as a leader you should provide for them and make sure they’re not suffering like the rest of us, because it’s not the stupid themselves that are the problem, it’s what they become when they’re desperate.

    source

    • fishy@lemmy.today ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      As far as I’m concerned we should just admit they’re gullible and want to blame someone for their failings. Let’s take that and manipulate them to our ends. Blame the billionaires, call them thieves, keep rattling the cage and provoking them. Tell them they’d have a Ferrari if Bozo and the rat didn’t steal from them. Sure it’s gross, but it’s what you’d do with a child refusing to take their medicine. It’s ultimately for their own good.

      source
  • fishy@lemmy.today ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Gullible yes, probably motions too. You can be extremely intelligent and still have massive blind spots. My mom and Grandpa are both conservatives but I’d consider them intelligent. I was able to have discussions with them and convince them a lot of conservative policy is unnecessarily cruel and short sighted. Got both to promise me they wouldn’t vote for Trump, but they’re fiscally conservative because they’ve got money.

    source
• HelixDab2@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I note that they state their thesis–conservatives are more susceptible to believing lies–but they only talk about lies conservatives believe, without anything to compare to. That is, they state specific misinformation that conservatives are likely to believe, but they don’t say anything about whether they’re actually more likely to believe lies, overall, than liberals/progressives/leftists. Everything that they seem to be citing is anecdotal; they have specific lies that are believed, but don’t talk about the over rate of believe of lies.

  I dunno, feels low like low-effort dunking rather than actually dissecting the why.

  source

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    “Conservatives are dumb, not like us liberals” is a coping mechanism liberals rely on to displace blame for failed policy. Its never the fault of the Democratic establishment when a liberal initiative fails. Its never the fault of a bloc of moderate voters, prone to selecting the most conservative voices in their own policy for fear of upsetting the Swing MAGA Voter, for picking conservative Democrats during a primary. Its never the fault of party Mega-Donors for squashing legislation inside a Dem legislative committee or bright-blue state legislature.

    The lies liberals tend to believe live somewhere between “We’re helplessly outnumbered by conservatives even in states we dominate” and “Don’t trust the Radical Left, their views are too extreme and will never work!” It is the lie of impotency relative to the conservative lie of hubris. Republicans believe they can Do As Thou Wilt and mold the world to their reactionary beliefs. Democrats believe they need permission from the billionaire class and their media troglodytes before they can impose any kind of policy change.

    source

    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      The first two years of Biden are roughly equivalent to what Trump has now in terms of power and support, but there’s a massive difference in results.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• the_q@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Educated doesn’t equate to intelligent. Be born in the south and grow up in that environment and you can’t help but come out of it either broken, or exactly like you’re suppose to.

  source

  • TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    born in south. Agree. Teachers can’t legally use my fucking name anymore because of ““woke””

    source
  • Kvoth@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Disagree with that statement. Education and intelligence don’t mean your world view can’t steer your wrong. Ben Carson is both, but that doesn’t stop him from saying insane shit

    source
• NotLemming@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I’m convinced that conservatives are almost all mentally ill. Most are able to function day to day, which is how they go undetected and don’t access mental health services (for these issues).

  Their illness is characterised by low empathy and other traits associated with ‘cluster B’ illnesses, probably in milder form than the ones seriously mentally ill people such as sociopaths show. However, the more seriously mentally ill such as sociopaths can be accepted within these groups due to their similarities.

  People in these groups don’t feel remorse or follow other human positive norms such as valuing truth, justice, kindness etc. They aren’t able to understand most positive human traits and for example, when corrected would only understand that they’d been attacked and so go on the offensive and attack themselves.

  They also show strong psychotic traits, which is why they will support conspiracy theories which align with their self interest with little insight.

  Lack of insight is also a feature in itself, which deserves to be highlighted. There’s limited capacity for growth or improvement as they don’t have the innate capacity for what we would call humanity.

  source
• oce@jlai.lu ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I think it’s far/extreme politics rather than just conservative, they are quite beyond basic conservative at this point. Lemmy makes it easy to observe how the far left also believes lies and propaganda that confirms their ideology.

  source

  • stardust@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Tankies push false communism with the bourgeoisie still at the top giving scraps to the proletariat and passing it off as paltry socialism. There’s no societal change to the hierarchy, balance of power, or wealth.

    It’s more a weird ultra nationalism where proletariats are being tricked into thinking power has been given to the people when the ones at top are abusing their power to oppress forms of counter thought to seize whatever they want and retain their wealth. I wouldn’t consider them left just because there’s some form of socialism. Lot of countries do if at the very least they fix roads and have fire fighters.

    source
• prinzmegahertz@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Lots of it stems from early childhood. If you are punished for asking questions, If you are rewarded for just repeating what your parents say, critical thinking gets buried deep within your mind. As the „we vs them“ tribal mentality, right and wrong stops being about the action and instead on the alignment of the person committing the action. So a priest molding children might not be nice, but he is one of the Christian tribe and that’s important. On the other, if an Democrat dies diverting, it’s by definition bad, because he is in another tribe. It’s simple as that, but hard to understand if you have a progressive worldview.

  source
• SkyNTP@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Maybe it’s the other way around… Maybe people predisposed to being lied to will have political views that are that lie.

  source
• queermunist@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Ask a liberal about the war in Ukraine or actually existing socialism and you’ll quickly find out it isn’t limited to conservatives. 😒

  source

  • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I, too, engage in whataboutism when a question makes me uncomfortable.

    source

    • stardust@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Just to provide some context to the mind of the person you responded to they supports the appointment of Tusli Gabbard.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
    • queermunist@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Hardly. I’m just pointing out y’all are as propagandized as conservatives. You’re just susceptible to different lies.

      Liberals love to crow about how they fucking love science, but refuse to engage politics or history in a scientific manner. It’s all vibes.

      source

      • -> View More Comments
• Feathercrown@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  And for political conservatives, but not for liberals, greater knowledge of science and math is associated with a greater likelihood of dismissing what almost all scientists believe about the human causation of global warming

  Also known as the “I must know more than every scientist to ever live” effect

  source
• multifariace@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Ask Johnathan Haidt. I am trying to get my hands on his books but the libraries have one or two copies of ones they do have and not at my local branch.

  source
• SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  More insulated communities.

  Way lower education rates with worse outcomes.

  Being religiously indoctrinated as a child.

  source

  • infinite_goop@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I was going to mention religious indoctrination as well - if you’re taught your entire life to believe in something not based on evidence, I think that you’re more likely to believe things without evidence.

    source
• TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Because they aren’t “conservatives”, that’s just a label they slap onto themselves and their changes are more radical than those they label “liberals”. What they really are is what you’ve said, voters more susceptible to believing lies, the psychotypes that have been identified through social network big data profiling that are particularly susceptible or within a network susceptible to manipulation. That’s also why a lot of these social network are pretty shameless about how they want to stimulate fake AI users. It is the cattle-lification of social network for those with the wealth and the power to do it, to such an extent that you terms like 1984’s “doublethink” apply quite aptly well beyond the theoretical.

  source
• _stranger_@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Image

  source
• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  People are naturally predisposed to believe the information set before them. If you present someone with a variety of opinions and views, but you constrain the scope of those opinions, you can convince people they have a level of agency in selection that is actually severely limited by the discourse.

  In the US, we see this explicitly in terms of Climate Change as a discussion of

  • Right: Climate Change is an Evil Foreign Hoax / Good Aktuly
  • Center: Let the private sector fix it
  • Left: Maybe spend a little public resources encouraging emissions reduction eventually

  By taking the right-wing view further and further to the extreme and conflating Center and Left views as identical, you give people a plethora of variations on right wing views (its fake, its actually good, its not real but overstated, its caused by sunspots and there’s nothing we can do, its too expensive to address, its impossible because God won’t let it happen) that audiences can pick from.

  Combine this with the general neutering of public input into policy and you present right-wing viewers with a comforting lie (climate change isn’t a problem, that’s why we’re not doing anything about it) rather than an unsettling truth (climate change isn’t a problem for the current generation, so we’re just going to keep doing it because it generates profit for an elite cartel and steady jobs for a large underclass).

  The alternative is to align with a liberal view of “It’s a huge problem but there’s nothing we can do!” which has been the Democrat policy since the Clinton Administration. Why feel impotent when you can feel smugly self-confident instead? If politicians aren’t paying attention to your demands, simply join the camp that aligns with the current leadership’s slanted views so you can feel like you’re on the winning team.

  source
• gearheart@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Wait so we are going back to thinking it’s feigned ignorance?

  At this point if time I was sure it’s maliciousness and they know exactly lies it involves as long as it suits their white America.

  source
• __nobodynowhere@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  They want to feel safe and secure

  source
• MITM0@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Because they’re lizard-brained

  source