Experimental evidence has shown that the fear-based amygdala tends to be larger in conservatives than in liberals.20

It just feels better for us to think that we are smart, well-informed, capable people than that we are not.

the truth, for then one might be impetuous enough to act on a falsehood. It is important at this point to give at least a minimal definition of truth.

In his work on the psychology of emotion and moral judgment, David DeSteno, a psychologist at Northeastern University, has studied the effect of such “team affiliation” on moral reasoning. In one experiment, subjects who had just met were randomly divided into teams by giving them colored wristbands. Then they were separated. The first group was to

Are there better methods? According to Brooke Binkowski, managing editor of the fact-checking website Snopes, “pinching off fake news isn’t the answer. The answer is flooding it with actual news. And that way, people will continue looking for information, and they will find vetted, nuanced, contextual, in-depth information.”57 While this sounds sen

make it so. But when our leaders—or a plurality of our society—are in denial over basic facts, the consequences can be world shattering.

before our eyes tells us otherwise. At some level we all value group acceptance, sometimes even over reality itself. But if we care about truth, we must fight against this. Why? Because the cognitive biases that I have described in this chapter are the perfect precursor for post-truth. If we are already motivated to want to believe certain things,

In his book Infotopia, Cass Sunstein has discussed the idea that

Hannah Arendt when he says “what convinces masses are not facts, and not even invented facts, but rather, open defiance.”