Abstract
In a society in which the greed for attention supersedes the ideals of truth and truthfulness, fake news has an easy time of it. So far, politicians have not managed to put a stop to it. And Facebook, Twitter and co. are making good money from the spread of false information. So we have to protect ourselves. It will help if we better understand how our brain processes information. What makes our brains so susceptible to misinformation? Why are we so quick to believe and spread targeted disinformation? How can we protect ourselves from targeted attempts at manipulation? The lecture offers two things: results from basic cognitive research on how our brain processes true and false information, and very practical tips on how to deal rationally with messages from social networks and messenger services.
Literature tip: Knauff, M. & Spohn, W. (2021) (Eds.). The Handbook of Rationality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
For further information, please refer to the MindTalks website: http://www.mindtalks.uni-bremen.de/drupal/
