NM2303 Fake news, Lies and Spin:

How to sift fact from fiction

Week 04 Lecture: News Consumers - Thinking

Francesca Nathan

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Introduction

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Where we are

WK TOPIC
1 Introduction (cancelled)
2 Introduction & media manipulation
3 News Purposes & Methods
4 News consumer: thinking
5 Automatic responses
6 Analytic responses
Mid term break
7 News Stories
8 Completeness
9 Sources
10 Evidence
11 Visualisations
12 Explanations
13 Conclusion 3
Warmup

What are the main topics?

1. Practical rationality
2. Two Minds
3. Responding to news
4. Disinformation (how to exploit dual-process
thinking)
Where we are

This week we start to look at:

• How our brains process information
• Specifically, a dual process model
• What happens when we encounter news and
disinformation
• How disinformation is designed to exploit the way
we think
Today's session

There were a few issues that came up in Perusall that we

will address next week (or the week after) when we look at
our AUTOMATIC SYSTEM and ANALYTIC SYSTEM in more
detail.

So, most of today's session is going to focus on

connecting some of the key concepts to you.
Being rational
Being rational

I want to start by responding to some of the Perusall comments about

rationality, faith, and religion.
• Most people want their beliefs to correspond to reality to some
extent (truth) – and they also want to act in ways that help them
achieve their goals (what to do).
• We can take rational approaches to determine what is true – and
what to do (to achieve our goals).
• We can also rely on non-rational approaches (accept things
without subjecting them to analysis, flip a coin, throw dice,
consult the stars and so on).

Notice: none of this says anything about what you should or should not
believe, what goals you should have, or which methods you should use.
Being rational

• In some aspects of our lives, we may decide that we

want to be as rational as possible
• And in other cases, rationality is not relevant for us
(e.g., religious faith, relying on spontaneous inspiration).
• I am not trying to convince which choices you should
make
• And I am certainly not trying to convince you that you
should always be rational or that "rationality/science
trumps every other method" for determining what is
true or how to attain your goals.
Being rational

Here's what I am doing:

• Making you aware of common misconceptions about our
own rational abilities and behaviours
• Helping you see how those put you at risk in the context
of disinformation
• Showing you how you can increase your rationality (for
those situations where you would like to improve)
• Helping you to practise (e.g., SIFT, Perusall)

Again: I am not trying to convince you what is or is not true (i.e.,

what to believe) – nor how to attain your goals (i.e., what to do).
Being rational

• Most of us are a mixture of rationality and faith

(whether it is religious faith or faith in information we
choose to accept without verifying it ourselves or …).
• This is just as true of me as it is for all of you.
• But ask yourselves:
• How do you identify the situations where it is in your
best interests to be rational?
• How do you determine whether you do or do not
behave rationally?
• What can you do to improve?
Being rational

We all have beliefs that we have accepted without

questioning them sufficiently. Perhaps some of you believe
one or more of the following are true:
• Eating carrots will improve your eye-sight
• We only use 10 percent of our brains
• Some people are left-brained and some people are right-brained
• Some people have ESP
• Children who excel academically or who read a lot are not as social or physically
active as children who do not read or are less academically successful

None of these has been confirmed empirically (and some

have been disconfirmed) – in fact, the last one is the
opposite of what research has shown.
Being rational

Even when we have false beliefs, they may not have a big
impact on us or society. We might mention them in
conversation, but otherwise, they don't do much harm.

But some false beliefs can have significant impact: politicians,

policy-makers, lawmakers, researchers, journalists, doctors
who make diagnoses and recommendations, and so on. And
yes, even the false beliefs of parents, friends, and teachers
can have a big impact on us.
Being rational

Consider the following advice from a widely-used book that

helps students prepare for graduate entrance exams.

Exercise great caution if you decide to change an answer.

Experience indicates that many students who change answers
change to the wrong answer.

Question: Based on what you currently know about

AUTOMATIC SYSTEM and ANALYTIC SYSTEM, do you
think this advice is correct?

Ans: Click yes or no in “participants”

• It is one thing to have beliefs and it is another to act
on them
• We may see claims so many times that we start to
believe them (this is one of the biggest dangers of
disinformation on social media)
• But what if we start acting on these unexamined
beliefs: "I'm already eating plenty of garlic, so I'm not
going to do anything else to protect myself."
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• Another way we act on unexamined beliefs is by interacting
with other people: "I'm going to help others by sharing this
information" – "This cure is the only one I'm going to allow my
children to use”
• As we have seen, social media interactions can amplify these
beliefs
• Furthermore, when we interact with others, one of the biggest
dangers is that we dig in to our beliefs, defending and
justifying them rather than examining them carefully
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• Once we start to examine or evaluate claims we encounter
(or even our own beliefs), we need effective methods.
• We will be exploring such methods during the module
• For now, you should start reflecting on how you verify
whether claims are true or not.
• This does not mean all (or even most) of our beliefs are false.
It just means that we need to think about how we would
effectively evaluate a claim or belief if we start to question it.

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Being rational
"Regarding `going with their gut', I think there are pros and
cons to it. … Many successful businesses were set up by
entrepreneurs who started with an intuition. A survey
conducted in 2002 showed that 45% of corporate executives
rely on gut feeling than analytics when running businesses."

• It may be true that "Many successful businesses were

set up by entrepreneurs who started with an intuition"
• However, is a survey of corporate executives good
evidence for this claim? (Please answer yes or no)
• Why or why not? Could there be a better type of
evidence – if so, what?
Breakout Exercise

The reading claimed that 70% of university students

answered incorrectly that the conclusion follows from the
premises for the following argument:
All roses are flowers, some flowers fade quickly, therefore
some roses fade quickly.

When our class did the question last week, only 15 out of
47 (31%) answered incorrectly. How do you explain the
difference between the claim and your performance as a
group?
Post-Breakout Exercise: Discussion

The reading claimed that 70% of university students

answered incorrectly that the conclusion follows from the
premises for the following argument: All roses are flowers,
some flowers fade quickly, therefore some roses fade quickly.
When you NUS students did the question last week, only 15
out of 47 (31%) answered incorrectly. How do you explain the
difference between the claim and your performance as a
group?
Discussion

• It is important to question certain claims.

• We sometimes used flawed reasoning to dismiss claims, so we

should be careful if we have an impulse to immediately dismiss
them.

• One typical mistake is to assume that statistical results are wrong

“because we know an exception”. We tend to overvalue the
comparatively small sample size of our own experience.

• And in terms of what the “rose” reasoning research shows: be

careful of social media posts where the conclusion of an argument
is something you agree or disagree with. When this happens, we
tend to ignore the actual reasoning and evidence for the conclusion.
Self Test

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Responding to information
Our tendencies to contextualise information
Imagine we encounter the claim: "The COVID-19 virus was created as a
biological weapon in China"

We can see the different contextualisation tendencies in different responses

to this claim.

• Belief projection: "I already believe that the Chinese are engaged in
biological warfare"

• Intentional stance: "The disease is so horrific there must be a reason

behind it – and this seems like a convincing reason.”

• Narrative: "That story makes sense – there is an evil person/organisation

that did this in order to cripple other economies"

Yes, these can overlap.

Responding to information

Now I want to address some categories of Perusall responses:

1. "This claim cannot be correct"
2. "I see these behaviours in other people"
3. "I recognise that I do some of these things"
4. "What can I do to overcome my limitations"

Some students had a combination of these responses —

and a number of students suggested that SIFT and other
techniques are useful for addressing point 4.
Responding to information
"I often question the extent to which people are really affected by
confirmation bias."
• There were a few sceptical comments like the one
above
• And they highlight a challenging tension that we all
face: being open-minded versus being critical or
sceptical
• These two things are not mutually exclusive, but
some people seem to believe they are.
• We actually need both to overcome our own
problematic biased thinking and biased behaviours.
Responding to information

"I often question the extent to which people are really affected by
confirmation bias."

• Of course it is fine to question claims!

• But just be careful that you are not doing this as a
way to avoid examining whether those claims
apply to you.
• Yes, you may be different, but for the cognitive and
behavioural claims you will encounter in the
readings, you would be wise to assume you are not.
Responding to information
"I often question the extent to which people are really affected by
confirmation bias."

• As we will see, there are individual differences related to

what people know, whether they activate their analytic
thinking at appropriate moments or not, what kind of
analytic effort they perform, how well they sustain that
effort, and so on.
• But as we will see in more detail in the coming weeks,
we all have certain fundamental universal biases.
• If you are not convinced, you should ask yourself what it
would take to convince you.
Responding to information

• Another pattern is when people accept that other people think

and behave in certain ways, but do not reflect on whether
those things apply to them.
• If you believe they do not apply to you, of course you may be
right – but figure out a way to accurately verify if you are or not
• Note: some of the questions in the readings and lectures are
intended to help you discover such things. You will learn the
most if you treat them as self-assessments rather than trying
to find and post the correct answer.
• In addition to potentially deceiving ourselves, believing that
something only applies to other people can lead to an
unpleasant environment (e.g., outrage culture on social media)
Responding to information

• For example, social media is full of posts where

atheists criticise the hypocrisy and flawed logic of
religious people —and posts by religious people
condemning the flawed thinking of athiests.
• We will never adequately reduce the anger and
outrage of social media until we learn to actually have
meaningful conversations with people who have
different beliefs.
• Again, coming to an understanding of someone's
perspective does not mean you have to abandon all
critical thinking and simply accept that perspective.
Responding to information

• A number of you asked "what can we do to stop

ourselves or overcome these problematic
behaviours"?
• You will learn relevant specific skills over the course of
this module (e.g, SIFT)
• In addition to the techniques relevant to
disinformation, I will also be emphasising certain
techniques that you can practice in Perusall or during
lectures and tutorials.
Responding to information

• A number of techniques are to help you avoid

confirmation bias and the tendency to "dig in" to our
beliefs rather than adequately reexamining them.
• For example, you will notice that I sometimes ask you
to make your best case for a claim or answer
that you disagree with. I am not doing this to
convince you to believe that other answer. Rather, the
goal is to help you develop the habit of
understanding and fairly evaluating claims with
which you disagree.
Responding to information

• Unless someone says something truly offensive, I am

not going to step in and moderate Perusall.
• However, you can all use Perusall to learn about
yourselves.
• If not many people respond to your posts, try to figure
out why that is.
• If you do get responses, are they mostly in the form of
"I agree" or "I don't quite agree"? Your comments
might be contributing to an echo chamber that only
attracts others willing to agree or fight with you.
Responding to information
• I notice a number of you trying to engage others by ending
your post with "what do you all think?"
• It's a good start, but consider this: if you have already
strongly stated an opinion, to what extent will others think
that you are actually open to hearing different opinions and
learning about them?
• In some cases, students make extremely strong claims:
"This is obviously wrong." Again: I encourage all of you to
STOP and notice your own reactions before you post.
• If you are posting in anger or frustration, it is likely that others
will only respond if they feel the same. That's not the way to
signal that you are open to the possibility that you might
be wrong and that you are interested in learning.
Responding to information

• None of this is intended to prevent you from asking critical

questions.
• But notice the difference between the different versions of a
statement:
• "This aspect of the reading is just wrong because it contradicts X"
• "I want to cast doubt on this aspect of the reading because it contradicts
X"
• "Can someone explain why this aspect of the reading makes sense? It
seems to contradict X."
• Ask yourselves: which version of the post indicates the person:
• is open to the possibility of being wrong?
• is interested in hearing how others make sense of it?
• is interested in learning from others?
Responding to information
• In the end, the problem of disinformation is partly about the way
we think and respond, partly about manipulation techniques, partly
a side-effect of the ways in which we are connected via the
Internet and social media.
• Please be aware that disinformation agents exploit our
emotional reactions – we contribute to the spread of
disinformation with our convictions and outrage, among
other things
• One thing we can all do it give others a chance rather than being
so confident that we are correct or responding with outrage.
• We can understand and interact with others without losing our
ability to be critical.
VIDEO: Confirmation Bias - Heidi Halvorson

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Breakout Exercise

Based on the claims in the video, if your initial impression of a news

organisation is that it is unreliable, your brain will interpret everything the
organisation does in a way that further confirms that impression.
It will take sustained effort for us to change our minds. We will have to
see many, many exceptional examples of the news organisation
demonstrating it is reliable for you to even consider changing your mind
about it. This means: you have to be paying attention to the stories
from the news organisation and experience quite a few incidents where
the reporting from that organisation in unambiguously reliable for you.
In the days before the Internet, individuals were more likely to "give a
news organisation a second chance" because it was often the only
local source of published news. How do you think social media is
impacting our willingness and ability to give news organisations a
second chance?
Breakout Exercise - Discussion
Closing
Gradebook

• LumiNUS gradebook is sometimes problematic when

we upload marks via Excel. In some cases, when we
need to upload a second time, the marks and
comments do not get overwritten.
• Last week: marks & comments were the same for
both Perusall activities, even though I uploaded
different ones for Week 1.
• Anyway, it should all be sorted now.
• If for some reason, there seems to be something
wrong with your Gradebook marks, let me know.
Up Next

This week:
• Tuesday (tomorrow): Assignment is due before
11.59pm.
• Tutorials: Chapter 04 - Thinking
• Reading: Chapter 05 - Automatic Responses
One more thing
We all have way way more Homer Simpson than Spock in us
— so try to STOP before reacting on social media (and in life)!
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Post lecture — issues

• Some students have said that they would feel more

comfortable if lectures and tutorials were not recorded.
They want to have a safe space to raise sensitive issues.
In order to provide this, we will not record these classes
to enable a freer, open environment for such
discussions.

• Students have also said they felt nervous about joining

Perusall discussions that seemed rather passionate (eg.
about religion vs rationality). It’s fine to raise questions
and be critical, yet do so with somewhat less passion.

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Thank you!

See you at tutorials this week!

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