Thread by @Cajsa

Reading "Sisters in Hate" and this made !e think of @eminently_me5
"Everyone has “the potential for resisting false ideas,”a trio of researchers note in a paper about Spinoza’s theory, “but this potential can only be realized when the person has

(a) logical ability, (b) correct information, and (c) motivation and cognitive resources.” No one, it seems, is immune from the psychic glitch of sometimes believing that what’s wrong is right.

Among the chinks in our intellectual armor is a susceptibility to repetition. Research shows that people become more credulous of an idea the more times they encounter it. In what’s known as the illusory truth effect,

people are more likely to perceive statements that they’ve encountered on multiple occasions as true even if they already know the statements are false...

The further from reality someone’s belief is, the less likely they are to course correct. In fact, trying to get them to do so can backfire spectacularly: Research shows that people sometimes double down on their misperceptions when presented with the truth.

“I know that what is contained herein will be bitterly denied,” former Union soldier James McElroy wrote in his 1879 account of life in a brutal Confederate prison, an early challenge to the narrative of the Lost Cause.

“I know that hell hath no fury like the vindictiveness of those who are hurt by the truth being told to them.”

That last sentence!

This book is great...depressing, but informative. Do not count on white women to preserve democracy.

Here is the book
littlebrown.com/titles/seyward…