3 Open vigilance mechanisms have evolved to help us accept beneficial messages and reject harmful ones. 2 Individuals with common goals have no incentive to send unreliable communication signals. In this lively and provocative book, Hugo Mercier demonstrates how virtually all attempts at mass persuasion-whether by religious leaders, politicians, or advertisers-fail miserably. Why is mass persuasion so difficult? Mercier uses the latest findings from experimental psychology to show how each of us is endowed with sophisticated cognitive mechanisms of open vigilance.Ĭomputing a variety of cues, these mechanisms enable us to be on guard against harmful beliefs, while being open enough to change our minds when presented with the right evidence. Key ideas in Not Born Yesterday 1 When deciding what to believe, we seek out beliefs that speak to our goals and match our views. Not Born Yesterday explains how we decide who we can trust and what we should believe-and argues that were pretty good at making these decisions.

In this lively and provocative book, Hugo Mercier demonstrates how virtually all attempts at mass persuasion - whether by religious leaders, politicians, or advertisers - fail miserably, says a review on the Princeton University Press website.ĭrawing on recent findings from political science and other fields ranging from history to anthropology, Mercier shows that the narrative of widespread gullibility, in which a credulous public is easily misled by demagogues and charlatans, is simply wrong. Not Born Yesterday explains how we decide who we can trust and what we should believe - and argues that we’re pretty good at making these decisions. That is the thesis of the book Not Born Yesterday, in which the cognitive scientist Hugo Mercier presents a mountain of evidence against the idea that humans are gullible, that they are ‘wired not to seek truth’.

Not Born Yesterday by Hugo Mercier