President Donald Trump has just declared a national emergency after signing a bipartisan spending bill to fund the government and avoid another shutdown.
The national emergency declaration, which will allow Trump to bypass Congress and free up more money for border wall construction, comes more than a month after Trump first proposed the idea of using an emergency order to fund the wall that he said Mexico would pay for.
Just two days ago, Trump told reporters that construction of the border wall was already well underway. It is not. But now, he wants you to believe that he needs to declare a national emergency to build the wall that he just said was already being built.
Is your head spinning yet? No one could blame you for saying yes.
Our brains have limited cognitive resources, and Trump?s constant drumbeat of misinformation quickly overburdens our ability to effectively parse truth from fiction.
When evaluating information, our brains rely on mental shortcuts to help us form judgments and make decisions without having to stop and think about each step along the way. While these heuristics allow us to sort through the constant flow of information we encounter, they also leave us vulnerable to cognitive biases and poor decision-making.
Trump may not be a great dealmaker, but he is quite effective at tapping into these vulnerabilities and exploiting them to his benefit. No issue demonstrates this more clearly than immigration, and perhaps no event demonstrates this more clearly than the National Emergency declaration, which was issued in response to a crisis that doesn?t actually exist.
When Trump tells a lie, he tells it repeatedly. When he wanted people to believe that the border wall was being built, he returned to the claim on a near-daily basis, just like he peddles the same falsehoods about immigration and crime at all of his rallies.
Even when we know the information we?re hearing is false, being exposed to the same statement repeatedly has been shown to increase its acceptance as true. This is due in part to a phenomenon known as the ?illusory truth effect,? whereby people rate statements as more truthful and believable when they have encountered them previously than when they are new statements.
Unfortunately, the same effect makes us susceptible to repetition of any kind?including the restatement of false claims during the process of fact-checking. Yes, you read that correctly: The more times a falsehood is repeated, even for the purpose of refuting it, the more likely it is to be accepted as true.
Research also shows that people tend to perceive messages from multiple sources to be more credible than those from a single source. As a result, hearing the same thing from multiple people or groups increases the likelihood that it will be accepted as true, even if it?s not.:shrug:
The national emergency declaration, which will allow Trump to bypass Congress and free up more money for border wall construction, comes more than a month after Trump first proposed the idea of using an emergency order to fund the wall that he said Mexico would pay for.
Just two days ago, Trump told reporters that construction of the border wall was already well underway. It is not. But now, he wants you to believe that he needs to declare a national emergency to build the wall that he just said was already being built.
Is your head spinning yet? No one could blame you for saying yes.
Our brains have limited cognitive resources, and Trump?s constant drumbeat of misinformation quickly overburdens our ability to effectively parse truth from fiction.
When evaluating information, our brains rely on mental shortcuts to help us form judgments and make decisions without having to stop and think about each step along the way. While these heuristics allow us to sort through the constant flow of information we encounter, they also leave us vulnerable to cognitive biases and poor decision-making.
Trump may not be a great dealmaker, but he is quite effective at tapping into these vulnerabilities and exploiting them to his benefit. No issue demonstrates this more clearly than immigration, and perhaps no event demonstrates this more clearly than the National Emergency declaration, which was issued in response to a crisis that doesn?t actually exist.
When Trump tells a lie, he tells it repeatedly. When he wanted people to believe that the border wall was being built, he returned to the claim on a near-daily basis, just like he peddles the same falsehoods about immigration and crime at all of his rallies.
Even when we know the information we?re hearing is false, being exposed to the same statement repeatedly has been shown to increase its acceptance as true. This is due in part to a phenomenon known as the ?illusory truth effect,? whereby people rate statements as more truthful and believable when they have encountered them previously than when they are new statements.
Unfortunately, the same effect makes us susceptible to repetition of any kind?including the restatement of false claims during the process of fact-checking. Yes, you read that correctly: The more times a falsehood is repeated, even for the purpose of refuting it, the more likely it is to be accepted as true.
Research also shows that people tend to perceive messages from multiple sources to be more credible than those from a single source. As a result, hearing the same thing from multiple people or groups increases the likelihood that it will be accepted as true, even if it?s not.:shrug:
