I have discovered a remarkable book that is only slightly related to writing (related because it discusses human nature): True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society by Farhad Manjoo
I haven’t finished the book yet (for the same reason I haven’t posted recently, life has interfered) but I read a great review and didn’t think I could equal it so I wanted to quote from this Amazon review by “watzizname” (read the whole review on the page about the book on Amazon (book name linked above).
Manjoo tells the story of the ‘Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,’ who created an almost entirely fictional story of John Kerry’s service in Vietnam to discredit his record as a war hero, because they were deeply offended by his declaration of opposition to the war before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after he returned from Vietnam. The SBV version was first presented publicly on numerous radio talk programs, with conservative hosts and audiences, to whom that version was truthy because they already held a low opinion of Democrats in general and a high opinion of George W. Bush. It felt right to them, and they accepted it as true, an opinion many hold to this day, despite conclusive evidence that Kerry did, in fact, genuinely earn his medals, and was truly a war hero.
This accords well with the observation of cognitive scientists that when the facts don’t fit a person’s frame, the frame stays and the facts are ignored or denied….
Manjoo tells about a study by Stanford professor Shanto Iyengar and Richard Morin of the Washington Post, in which they obtained a list of headlines in six categories: politics, Iraq war, race, travel, crime, and sports, and randomly placed beside each headline one of four logos: BBC, CNN, Fox, and NPR. Democrats somewhat preferred CNN and NPR, and Republicans very strongly preferred Fox. The Fox logo tripled the interest of Republicans in stories about politics and Iraq, and even increased Republicans’ interest and decreased Democrats’ interest in headlines about travel and sports. Professor Iyengar says that people “have generalized their preference for politically consonant news to nonpolitical domains.”
…consider the study by Neil Vidmar and Milton Rokeach, in which 237 students were asked what they thought about people who were different from them and what they thought was going on in the TV show ALL IN THE FAMILY.
“The majority of those surveyed found ALL IN THE FAMILY hilarious. But bigots and nonbigots harbored vastly different ideas about what was happening on the show. It was a classic case of selective perception. When asked who seemed to win most of the arguments–was it Archie [the bigot] or his hippie [non-bigoted] son-in-alw, Mike?–the bigots thought it was Archie. Those who weren’t bigoted thought it was Mike.”
There are 16 reviews on Amazon, four were four stars, one was one star and all the others were the maximum five stars. Most people found the one above (which was one of the five stars) to be the most useful. There is a lot in this book that I was not aware of including the “All in the Family” study (although I did have doubts that of all the people watching when this show was in the top 10 everyone got all the jokes in that the way they were meant). But I didn’t know a study had been done.
I have gotten the impression recently that more and more people are less and less interested in the real facts. Instead they prefer impressions that reinforce their own beliefs. But then who doesn’t. But when the facts show us to be wrong, we really do need to rethink what we believe and it seems many people won’t do the work that that entails.
Interesting when developing fictional characters that are fully human although there might be a tendency to be too blatant about this.
Another Amazon reviewer (Jean E. Pouliot) said of the author of True Enough, “He cites examples from both sides of the aisle — the attack of “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” on Senator John Kerry’s Vietnam heroism as well as the claim of certain Democrats that George W. Bush had stolen the 2004 election in Ohio and Florida. Manjoo exposes the personal vendettas (Swift Boaters) and the mistaken calculations (Dems) that started the ball rolling.”