Talk by cognitive scientist Hugo Mercier"Not born Yesterday: Why humans are less gullible than we think."
It is often thought that humans are gullible, easily manipulated by demagogues, advertisers, and politicians. I will argue that the opposite is true: humans are equipped with a set of psychological mechanisms that allow them to properly evaluate communicated information, and to reject information that is false or harmful. I will rely on experimental psychology data, as well as studies showing the failures of mass persuasion, from Nazi propaganda to American presidential campaigns. I will also suggest that, when people do accept false beliefs, they often do so only in a superficial manner.
Prof. Hugo Mercier is a cognitive scientist and CNRS Research Director at the Jean Nicod Institute in Paris. He researches human thinking, human communication and cultural evolution. He is the co-author of "The Enigma of Reason", with Dan Sperber, and the author of "Not Born Yesterday: The Science of Who We Trust and What We Believe." He and his team (esc – evolution & social cognition) studies social cognition in a broad sense (e.g. morality, communication, argumentation, social influence) in light of evolutionary biology, in order to better understand a variety of social and cultural phenomena such as religion, mass communication, policy, art, institutions, or social norms. Prof. Mercier also researched and published about how universal cognitive mechanisms explain the cultural success of bloodletting.
The talk is part of the “Responsible and Scalable Learning for Robots Assisting Humans” (ReScaLe) project funded by the Carl Zeiss Foundation.
The talk will take place online:
https://uni-freiburg.zoom.us/j/63068975461?pwd=VkFMZ2NxU2ZDdUFybzRYS1I5c25UUT09
Meeting-ID: 630 6897 5461
Kenncode: ZEISS2022
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