[MUSIC] We and others around us, often find ourselves falling for conspiracy theories and pseudo-scientific claims. But have you ever wondered why? Well, they're simple. It's much harder to be skeptical than it is to be gullible. Just because they are simple, it doesn't mean we should believe them. In this video, we will be discussing why it is that people might fall for pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. We'll need a researcher who studies how uncertainty can act as a powerful tool to manipulate beliefs and ideologies. But we'll also learn how to remain skeptical despite our feelings of fear and uncertainty. >> Humans are good at perceiving patterns and connections. But because we see what we want to see our interpretations of patterns are biased by our experiences. >> People can't understand the cause and effect nature of phenomenon and we're all like this, I'm not pointing fingers. We're all wired to make this misinterpretation. >> Normally, we would want to collect evidence systematically and use statistics to assess patterns and connections. Because we can't really trust what is right before our eyes. When we look systematically, we may see that what we perceived as a pattern wasn't really there at all. Well, luckily we have some local Alberta scientists that study exactly why and how well-meaning people can fall prey to pseudoscience and forget to be skeptical. For example, let's take a look at work done by Dr. David Rast's lab. >> So with my lab we study group processes and Leadership. And so I have two lines of research in the lab. We do one line of research on Intergroup leadership where we look at how leaders can resolve conflict between multiple groups of people. Like liberals and conservatives right now while we're in this political cycle, Eastern versus Western Canada for instance. And the other line of research that I do looks at intra-group leadership. So we're looking at leadership within a group. So how can leaders evoke things like conformity, how they might be able to get their followers to engage in something like collective action, social protest. We look at the role of uncertainty in both these lines of research to see how leaders can evoke feelings of uncertainty amongst their followers to strengthen these effects. The study I'm most well known for is this study looking at how uncertainty increases support for autocratic leaders. And I tend to get invited to a lot of management schools around the world to talk about that study in that line of research. The main way that we prime uncertainty is we use a cognitive prime where we asked participants in our cities to list three things that make them feel uncertain, or three things that make them feel confident about their place in the world and their future. We have I believe it's a four item measure of what we call self-related uncertainty. So these are uncertainties about yourself. So do you feel uncertain about who you are as a person, or your position in a group? We've done studies looking at how uncertainty can increase support for extremist groups. We've done studies looking at how feelings of uncertainty can increase support for autocratic leaders, deviant leaders, leaders who are engaging in more dissent from their groups. And just in general supporting leaders who we don't traditionally expect to be in leadership positions. We have quite a reliable effect with uncertainty on these different outcomes. So we find that uncertainty increases for for autocratic leadership and other deviant forms of leadership. And we also find quite reliably that uncertainty does increase support for extremist groups and join extremist groups. And there was recently a meta-analysis published showing that even outside of my lab other people doing research on uncertainty are finding similar effects. One of the ways I've been thinking about uncertainty in my lab is that uncertainty doesn't just change the way that people rate other groups or rate leaders. It actually changes the way that people think about and perceive leaders or groups. So when you're feeling uncertain for instance, there might be a restriction on your cognitive load, and this changes what information you're willing to consider about a leader or group. Cognitive load is the capacity which a person can think about something. So if a person say is dealing with a lot of different environmental stimuli, the cognitive load will be quite high. So the person will only be able to focus on a certain number of stimuli in the context. If cognitive load is quite low, so there's not a lot of stimuli in the context than they should be able to offer more cognitive resources to focus on those stimuli. >> Given the spread of misinformation and the clear harm that's having on the decisions we make as political citizens. And the decisions we make as Healthcare consumers. And this decisions we make as parents. Misinformation is having an adverse impact on all those realms. >> Reflect on the start of this lesson, what you were asked to recall, and how you responded to the snowy picture diagrams. You may be realizing that you are put in a position of certainty or uncertainty and then asked to look for patterns that you can identify. [MUSIC] >> If you click on review your responses and compare it to that of your fellow classmates. [MUSIC]
