Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things

Beliefs are powerful because once we have them, it takes a lot for us to question them. We’re more likely to avoid the hard work of questioning ourselves and instead double down,

Hitchens’ razor, named after Christopher Hitchens, the late literary critic, journalist, contrarian, and staunch atheist: “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”

Occam’s razor, “The simplest explanation is the one we should favor, until it is proven to be inadequate.”

Hanlon’s razor, “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by human fallibility,”

Deep canvassing starts by asking sensitive questions, listening to the answers with real interest, and then asking follow-up questions as a way to start a conversation. Why is this approach more likely to be effective? Because in the standard argumentative approach we tend to start counterarguing (at least in our heads, but sometimes out loud, too)

What makes scarcity most interesting—and relevant to our quest to understand misbelief—is that it is another form of stress that reduces our capacity to reason, think, plan, and generally make good decisions.

Perhaps you can even help him reframe his life changes as opportunities for freedom and possibilities for self-discovery rather than as disruptive and unexpected events.

Based on the results, they proposed that the experience of being unable to control a stressful situation produces three “deficits”: motivational, cognitive, and emotional. In other words, when we experience repeated stress that we cannot control, it makes us feel less inclined to take action and less able to figure out solutions. It makes us feel w

humans have a built-in motivation for what we call social utility, which is basically our ability to care about others. Research shows that although self-interest has some motivating force, social utility is sometimes even more powerful.