More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Jen Senko
Read between
December 13 - December 20, 2021
That makes it difficult for the person to think anything else because the horizons are narrowed
either puts themselves in a bubble or they’re put in a bubble (such as a nursing home) where they’re hearing the same kind of stories and from the same voices over and over again.
trigger a reaction from the primitive part of our brain that processes fear.
No critical thinking happens there, only response to a...
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you get a whole lot of new messages that come through that are saying it’s really important to consume stuff.
Since brainwashing is all about belief change, I asked Dr. Taylor to describe the factors involved in creating it. She says there are five factors: isolation, control, uncertainty, repetition, and use of strong emotion.
Isolation is cutting the person off from other sources of information.
THIS is one reason I think tradesmen or retired people are very susceptible to the talk radio thing. It’s just the one guy, driving around in a truck, listening to unchallenged crap on the radio. There’s no proverbial water cooler where the guy can bounce what he has heard off other people he respects.
Fox News, likes to do this all the time; they claim over and other that no other media tells the truth.
“You can only understand what the neuro circuits of your brain allow you to understand. Any fact that doesn’t fit that will be ignored or rejected as ridiculous, and so on.
Dr. Taylor added, “We have very good psychological mechanisms for not even hearing and perceiving information that conflicts with what we believe. We have filters that shut down contrasting information.”
So when we challenge our loved ones’ beliefs, we are in fact challenging who they are.
It can be so uncomfortable to hear “facts” contrary to one’s beliefs, there is even a term for it: cognitive dissonance.
When the amygdala is triggered, it disables the frontal lobes, where we have our impulse control mechanism and rational thought, and activates the fight-or-flight response.
No critical thinking happens there, only a response to a perceived threat.
These scary stories disguised as news—sometimes based in reality and sometimes not—have a f...
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the fear gets more deeply embedded, it ...
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When someone is overtaken with anger and anxiety, which then turns to rage, this is what is...
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People in this state can be easily manipulated because they need answers to be comforted out of their fear and because their rational thinking has been disabled by the amygdala’s flight-or-fight response. They’re essentially primed to be persuaded.
that he was addicted to the rush of rage.
He could not wait to shut himself in the kitchen, closing those big heavy doors he built, to listen to Rush Limbaugh for the full three hours and get all pissed off at Democrats and liberals. God have mercy on any who dared interrupt!
he said that there is a lot of “evidence from neuroscience that stress hormones have the same effect in the brain as addictive drugs like meth and cocaine.”
I felt it gave him purpose at a time in his life when he didn’t have one,
“it sort of simulates being out in the wild—it’s like feeling really alive.
And what happens when anger or fear rules our brains?
they actually feel better if they believe what others around them do.
That’s why so often in workplaces or in politics, you have groupthink.
The people who disagree then think that they better agree or at least pretend to.
He would say things like “don’t think about this until I get back on Monday.”
He would tell his listeners what the daily barrage of current events and politics meant, and his listeners would be relieved of the chore of figuring it out for themselves.
This is what I have always found ironic. They literally call themselves “Dittoheads”, while simultaneously thinking they are not “sheeple” and they “think for [my]self.”
He said he always agreed with Rush. Rush was always right.
a persecution complex.
And those who are not members, who don’t belonging to the club, are looked down on. And that’s an incentive to stay in the group.
which is what psychologists call a “negativity bias.”
hence the irrational fears of equality for LBGTQ Americans, immigrants, vaccinations, etc.
suggesting a “hypersensitivity to threat.”
“This could explain the two parties’ different stances on gun control. It makes sense that those who startle more easily are also the ones that believe they need to own a gun.”
Conservatives fear new experiences.
This is absolutely true of my person, and IMO, it is why my person does not get much pleasure from traveling and has no interest at all in going to another country, which is why, so far, I leave his ass behind and go with someone who is open to new experiences.
liberal college students owned more books and travel-related items and “conservatives had more things that kept order in their lives.”
Conservatives’ brains are more reactive to fear. This one is familiar to us already: “Using MRIs, scientists from University College London found that students who identify themselves as conservatives have a larger amygdala than self-described liberals.”
Why, then, do conservatives never, ever do anything about gun access after a shooting? Shouldn’t the conservative parents of children at a school where a shooting takes place demand restrictions that make that less likely?
We don’t know definitively if conservatives’ brains start out with larger amygdalae or if they become that way after being overexposed to fear- and anger-inducing stimuli.
We are pretty hopeless at realizing how much we are manipulatable.”
So why are some people so susceptible to believing ridiculous lies?
46 percent of Trump voters still believe Hillary Clinton was really connected to a child sex trafficking ring run from a pizza
parlor in DC or weren’t sure if it was true.
So chalking the gullibility up to just a lack of intelligence feels somewhat simplistic.
One thing my family noticed about my dad was that he had always been more gullible than my mother.
Why didn’t she believe it while Dad got completely sucked in?
I have totally wondered that, especially by 2015, when Trump made his “they’re sending murderers and rapists” thing. That was when we diverged sharply.
The other thing I remember about my dad was that he was not as introspective as my mother.
less introspective, less attentive to their inner feelings, and less likely to override their ‘gut’…and engage in further reflection to find a correct answer.”
“finding facts and pursuing evidence and trusting science is part of liberal ideology itself. For many conservatives, faith and intuition and trust in revealed truth appear as equally valid sources of truth.”
