When consumers feel powerless about a situation, their attitude changes

I came across Dr Kristin Laurin’s work on rationalisation when she participated in episode 125 of the You Are Not So Smart podcast. She found that people’s core beliefs change when they feel powerless about the situation that they find themselves in. This occurs via a process of rationalisation – i.e., we try to … Continue reading When consumers feel powerless about a situation, their attitude changes

The real reason behind the spread of fake news

The journal Science recently published a paper exploring how and why fake news spread. You can access it here, or you can listen to this episode of Chips with Everything (a Guardian podcast that I recommended, previously). The paper is authored by MIT researchers Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy and Sinan Aral. The researchers collected around 126,000 rumour stories on … Continue reading The real reason behind the spread of fake news