Memory helps us to shape our sense of ourselves, and it’s a creative act, not an objective accounting. Psychologists have established what they call “hindsight bias,” a mental quirk that encourages us to believe that today’s outcomes were once obvious and inevitable and that tomorrow’s changes are unlikely. We assume more constancy and less variance […]
Why information fails
Last month, the London Guardian reported that the mantra of the Brexit campaigners was “Facts don’t work… You have got to connect with people emotionally.” MSNBC’s Maddow Show contributors also fretted about this political information approach spreading to Europe from the United States. But emotion-heavy, data-light appeals have long been part of British and continental […]