The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.
Hanna Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
My vote to remain a 'no' isn't based on any evidence. It’s not based on any facts. It’s only based on my gut and my gut feeling and my own intuition. And that’s all I need to base my vote on the elections right there.
Couy Griffin, Otero County, NM commissioner (on his decision
not to certify the votes in his county)
On a rainy day, Tuesday November 2, 2021, hundreds of people gathered at the site overlooking where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. They huddled together under umbrellas, waiting for history to be made. Most of them were outfitted with shirts, flags and other merchandise emblazoned with the legend “Trump-Kennedy 2024.” They were waiting for the president’s son John F. Kennedy Jr. – who has been dead for over 20 years – to make an appearance.
They were all hard-core believers in QAnon, a collective of conspiracy theories revolving around an idea that Trump is battling a Satan-worshiping cabal that traffics children for sex. When 12:30 p.m. came, the time when Kennedy Sr. was shot, they recited the Pledge of Allegiance. The crowd lingered, some for more than an hour, eventually trickling away, a few vowing that Kennedy Jr. would reappear at a Rolling Stone concert later in the night.[1]
While the claim about Kennedy Jr. is considered fringe even for supporters of QAnon, the extensive set of false claims that have coalesced into an extremist ideology has radicalized its followers and incited violence and criminal acts, such as the events of Jan 6, 2021. The fact that so many people can be so detached from reality is concerning, for many reasons; let’s look at just one. In 2022, Payton Gendron, 18-years-old, shot 13 people, most of them Black, with a semi-automatic assault rifle, killing 10. Before the shooting, Gendron posted a 180-page manifesto endorsing the “great replacement theory,” a conspiracy popular among today’s right-wing activists and media personalities. In this belief, the progressive left is encouraging the unfiltered immigration of fecund non-Whites to replace White citizens, dilute White political influence and destroy White culture. Their anger and resentment, in this theory, are reactions to the cultural aggression of the “other side.”
To be sure, conspiracies have always been prevalent in the US, so much so that it can be viewed as an “American Tradition.”[2] Consider the conspiracy theories used to justify witch hunts in the colonial era, and white-supremacist terrorism leading to the Civil War, and long after it. We can trace this line straight to the conspiracy theory about the birthplace of Barack Obama, the US’s first Black president, and through the conspiratorial moral panic over Sharia law that seemingly vanished once there was another white man in office after him.
Why then, do many of us feel that conspiracy thinking is getting worse? One factor is technology. Over the past 20 years, sweeping technological change has dramatically accelerated the speed conspiracy theories can spread, and has made it easier for people with fringe beliefs to find one another. This allows groups from distant locations to coordinate actions to promote their fringe ideas. One example is the self-styled “Freedom Convoy,” a series of protests and blockades in Canada against covid vaccine mandates and restrictions. Most of its financing, however, came from far-right extremist groups in the US.
Another factor is changing demographics. While conspiracies are not unique to the US, they have been exacerbated by its unique racial, ethnic, and religious pluralism, according to historian Robert Goldberg and other historians.[3] Conspiracy theories allow their believers to feel part of a “true” American community, as special defenders of it. Indeed, conspiracists tend to define themselves as “real Americans” in a quest to protect “true” American values. Traditionally, these values have been defined by the majority white, Christian population.
According to the US Census Bureau, most of the population in the US will be nonwhite by the year 2050. This has created a backlash among some members of the shrinking white population that feel threatened by rapidly changing demographics. Many conspiracies involve the workings of “nefarious” ethnic and religious groups engaged in a war against white Christians. For example, according to the Anti-Defamation League, the members of the Neo-Nazi group 131 Crew “see themselves as soldiers at war with a hostile, Jewish-controlled system that is deliberately plotting the extinction of the white race.”[4]
What modern science and technology has also made more obvious is the huge “reality gap” between conspiracists and the “reality based” community. Consider the fact that millions of people in the US believe in a flat Earth or are not sure the Earth is round.[5] In the meantime, the “reality based” community has sent a man to the Moon and self-propelled rockets to Mars and other planets and has launched powerful telescopes to observe faraway stars that were created shortly after the Big Bang. To maintain belief in the face of overwhelming evidence, “flat-earthers” ignore or distort this information and believe that all the evidence that the Earth is round – say, pictures taken from space – is an elaborate hoax involving multiple governments.
As space travel has become more common, and even affordable to some “regular” citizens, flat-Earthers will have to create their own “reality bubble” to sustain their fictions. To a degree, this applies to all conspiracists, which is why some of them have started to develop their own social media platforms, where they can voice their fringe ideas freely, without censure. They are building their own self-contained alternate universe.
Reality vs mythology: Two mindsets
In his 2021 book, Rationality, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker divides people’s worlds into two zones. The first zone, the reality mindset, “consists of physical objects around them, the other people they deal with face to face, the memory of their interactions, and the rules and norms that regulate their lives. People have mostly accurate beliefs about this zone, and they reason rationally within it. Within this zone, people believe there is a real world and that beliefs about it are true or false. They have no choice, that is the only way to keep gas in the car, money in the bank, and the kids clothed and fed.” [6]
The second zone, the mythology mindset, is the “world beyond immediate experience: the distant past, the unknowable future, faraway peoples and places, remote corridors of power, the microscopic, the cosmic, the counterfactual and the metaphysical. People may entertain notions about what happens in these zones, but they have no way of finding out, and anyway does not make any discernible difference to their lives. Beliefs in these zones are narratives, which may be entertaining or inspiring or morally edifying. Whether they are literally “true” or “false” is the wrong question. The function of these beliefs is to construct a social reality that binds the tribe or sect and gives it a moral purpose.”[7]
We all need the reality mindset to function in the day-to-day world. This is based on our own immediate experience and feedback from our interactions with nature and other people. Many of us would like to think that our beliefs belong to the reality mindset. This is not far-fetched, as modern science is now able to answer fundamental questions about the real world, or at least provides us with the tools to assess their degree of veracity.
By contrast, conspiracists and QAnon believers are more focused on the mythology mindset. There is also the matter of who you trust. Given the scope and complexity of propositions about the real world, we need to rely on the experts – scientists, historians, journalists – and on what Pinker calls their “infrastructure of truth-seeking, including archival records, digital datasets, high-tech instruments, and communities of editing, fact-checking, and peer review.”
I have only a basic understanding of how the mRNA covid vaccines work, but mostly I trust the peer review process to assess the efficacy and safety of the vaccines, and the advice of experts in that field. Further, I trust the information provided by the CDC and the FDA even though I am fully aware that it is not always perfect and that it is bound to change as more is learned about the virus. This is a reality mindset.
The human mind, alas, does not always work this way. In Idea 10 I reviewed evidence showing that reasoning is not the main function of the human brain. Instead, humans are better at using their minds to convince others of their views and narratives of the world, which is why our minds are better adapted to understand remote spheres of existence – the mythology mindset. Moreover, science is difficult; it requires education and hard work to understand it. It is much easier to be captivated by myths and stories. “Submitting all of one’s beliefs to the trials of reason and evidence is an unnatural skill,” writes Pinker, “like literacy and numeracy, and must be instilled and cultivated.” That is, humans are not born scientists but storytellers.
The more science advances, and our collective body of knowledge grows, the more we also need to trust experts and institutions to make sense of things, especially in times of crisis.
In fact, the opposite seems to happen; during the coronavirus pandemic, American’s trust in scientists declined. Across the board, confidence in groups and institutions went down sharply. Overall, 29% of US adults say they have a great deal of confidence in medical scientists to act in the best interests of the public, down from 40% who said this in November 2020. Similarly, the share with a great deal of confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interests went down from 39% to 29% during the same period.[8]
Conspiracy thinking: What drives it?
What is it that makes some people more prone to see the world through the mythology mindset, believing in conspiracies, and to distrust experts? Research in the last few years has started to shed light into these important issues. We all have three types of intrinsic motivations:
The epistemic motive means the search for a stable, accurate, and internally consistent understanding of the world.
The existential motive is the need for people to feel safe and secure in their environment, and to exert control over the environment as autonomous individuals and as members of collectives.
The social motive refers to the desire to belong and to maintain a positive image of the self and the in-group.
In essence, conspiracies are driven by the need to fulfill these three motivations. Specifically, people believe in conspiracy theories to understand the world. For example, the need for cognitive closure, uncertainty, and the tendency to search for patterns, are all associated with heightened conspiracy belief. Conspiracy theories, therefore, appear to provide answers when people want to know the “truth” about important events.
People might also believe in conspiracies to meet their personal needs for security and control. Research has shown that people turn to conspiracy theories when they are anxious, feel powerless, or lack socio-political control. Conspiracy theories may allow people to feel that they are restoring a sense of control and security – they provide a means to reject information from experts and allow people to feel that they possess an alternative account.
For example, antivaxxers may feel that by rejecting vaccine mandates they retain control of their own bodies, and that the data is being manipulated by “Big Pharma” and thus should be distrusted. Indeed, a feeling of powerlessness seems to be a common factor among conspiracy theorists. In a 2016 paper exploring the link between schooling and conspiracy theories, researcher Jan-Willem van Prooijen from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands identifies three key factors that make people susceptible to conspiracy thinking:[9]
a belief in simple solutions for complex problems
feelings of powerlessness
subjective social class.
However, feelings of powerlessness and lack of control may not be sufficient to understand the social psychology at work here. The rise of the antivax and the QAnon movements suggest there are other emotions underpinning all of this. These are feelings of anger, grievance, and resentment. This may explain the conspiracy thinking in people considered part of the cultural and educated elite, such as Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas. Two days after the 2020 election, she told Mark Meadows, the chief of staff to then President Trump, to “release the Kraken”, echoing QAnon canards that had been making the rounds on pro-Trump sites. She claimed that: “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc.) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.”[10]
Restrictions and lockdowns imposed by the authorities over several months caused anger and frustration, and the effect was like pouring fuel on the fire. Anger is a powerful emotion that makes us want to lash out against those we feel are responsible for our troubles and woes. Importantly, anger also has a disinhibiting effect on our relationship to the truth. That is, when we are angry, we feel less obliged to speak truthfully and allow our emotions to take over.
Research shows that anger enhances our propensity to lie.[11] The deeper you probe into the QAnon and antivax movements, the more you find a conscious willingness to play it fast and loose with the truth. The movements are now driven by lies told out of spite and believed in part by those who tell them because of the gratification this brings them. For example, high profile antivaxxers get high volumes of followers to their social media feeds and get invited onto talk shows.
Recent advances in cognitive science suggest that highly intelligent people are more susceptible to “identity-protective cognition,” an unconscious process in which they use their intellect to justify rejecting facts inconsistent with their partisan identity. “The really upsetting finding is that the better you are at particular types of cognitive tests … the better you are at manipulating the facts to reflect your prior beliefs, the more able you are to cognitively shape the world, so it fits with your values,” says David Hoffman, a University of Pennsylvania law professor who studies cultural cognition. “You are able to take whatever unambiguous facts that exist in the world and run them through your own sausage-making mill to make it fit what you want.”[12] These results are fully compatible with the discussion of the brain’s core function in Idea 10.
Ultimately, however, conspiracy beliefs may not be fulfilling and uplifting. A 2017 study by psychologist Karen Douglas and colleagues at the University of Kent suggests that conspiracy beliefs, in the end, do not fulfill intrinsic motivations. Instead, conspiracy beliefs may be more appealing than satisfying. It is like cotton candy at an amusement park; we may crave it, but it is not going to provide much nourishment. According to Douglas, exposure to conspiracy theories is a “self-defeating form of motivated social cognition,”[13] ultimately thwarting intrinsic motives.
This should not be surprising. For example, flat-earthers need to continuously discard or distort information threatening to their worldview, even basic phenomena such as the changing seasons and eclipses. Not very satisfying.
In fact, conspiracy theorists seem to be constantly exposed to cognitive dissonance. In one study, the more participants believed that Princess Diana faked her own death, the more they also believed that she was murdered. Another example, the more participants believed that Osama Bin Laden was already dead when US special forces raided his compound in Pakistan, the more they believed he is still alive. The study, write the authors, “showed that mutually incompatible conspiracy theories are positively associated because both are associated with the view that the authorities are engaged in a cover-up…. conspiracy belief appears to be driven not by conspiracy theories directly supporting one another but by broader beliefs supporting conspiracy theories in general.”[14]
Being in a constant state of anger, grievance, and resentment, which characterize the members of some of the conspiracy movements, can be emotionally exhausting. Holding a worldview based on conspiracies can be both cognitively demanding and emotionally draining. The most extreme conspiracists, such as those that support QAnon, exhibit antisocial personality traits and behaviors, like narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.[15]
Yet not every conspiracist is a psychopath or is mentally ill, given the great number of people that believe in at least one conspiracy– even among those in power and highly educated. It’s too easy to dismiss all conspiracies as crazy or extreme, which is not always the case. The issue being that, at the core of the delusions characterizing conspiracy theories, there is usually a “kernel of truth.”
Consider the antivax movement. Most of us have a fear of needles and are concerned that we or our loved ones be injected with harmful substances. There is also the fact that the pharmaceutical giants have a far-from-unblemished public health record. In recent years, there have been many instances of pharmaceutical companies fraudulently marketing their drugs or making misleading claims about their safety. In this spirit, the suspicions harbored by the antivax movement are not entirely misplaced.
Having some skepticism is healthy. In fact, skepticism is integral to the scientific process. To determine the validity of a particular theory requires extensive observation, careful experimentation, and cautious inference (see Idea 12). However, there is a point at which skepticism becomes denialism. The latter is the automatic rejection of a claim regardless of the evidence for it, even if it is overwhelming (e.g., safety of covid vaccines). We have reviewed some of the factors that may explain why people become denialists. What is clear, though, is that society is failing to provide many of its citizens with the education and tools needed to distinguish between science and pseudoscience, between good data and rubbish.
Overwhelmed by complexity and uncertainty
As we have seen, there are various and complex reasons why people embrace conspiracies. One common factor seems to be an inability to cope with complexity and uncertainty. Undoubtedly, the quantity and complexity of the mental work expected of successful students and professionals have steadily increased in the last few decades. The cognitive demands became more pronounced during the coronavirus pandemic, when many of us had to take on new duties or adjust to new procedures, forcing our brains to toil continuously throughout the day. Were some people simply overloaded, and unable to cope with taking in complex information?
“Despite the hype,” writes the science journalist and author Annie Paul, “our mental endowment is not boundlessly powerful or endlessly plastic. The brain has firm limits — on its ability to remember, its capacity to pay attention, its facility with abstract and nonintuitive concepts — and the culture we have created for ourselves now regularly exceeds these limits.”[16]
Our limited resources to fathom complexity can lead to a belief that any worthwhile solution to a situation must be simple. This attitude perhaps explains the widespread mistrust of science today: it has become too complex and technical for the public to understand. So, people might ignore or reject its messages, especially when its findings are unpalatable. One case in point is climate change, a complex, interdisciplinary issue. This explains why (mostly Republican) politicians prefer to engage in “cultural wars” instead of working to implement effective but unpopular policies to combat climate change.
The desire for simplicity also explains why people are attracted to leaders like Donald Trump, who promise simple solutions to complex problems. Trump claimed a wall would “solve” illegal immigration from Mexico, and that Obamacare, the health system implemented by his predecessor, would be replaced “with something much better for everybody.” The wall was never fully built – the completed sections were easily breached – Obamacare was not repealed, and the “better” health system never materialized.
It is also easy to understand the appeal of religion as a way of coping with complexity, especially in times of great uncertainty and upheaval. Religions provide a highly hierarchical and structured worldview, as well as answers to the most profound questions. In fact, religious beliefs share some commonalities with conspiracy thinking: Aside from offering explanations for what happens in the world, they confer in the believer a sense that they know the “truth” that it is beyond the grasp of nonbelievers. Religious beliefs are also part of their identity and core values.
Most conspiracy theorists are also ardent religious believers. For example, rioters that stormed the Capitol building cheered loudly when someone yelled “Give it up if you believe in Jesus! … Give it up if you believe in Donald Trump!”[17]
The “fusion” of American evangelical Christianity and Trumpism is particularly noxious. As Robert P. Jones explains in his book White Too Long, “The most striking difference between right-wing politics in the US and other countries such as Australia, Canada, and Britain is the dominance and influence of white evangelical Protestants, who have a theological proclivity toward authoritarianism.” He continues, “The evangelical worldview in America has historically been built on a set of hierarchies that have been defended as divinely ordained — Christian over non-Christian, Protestant over Catholic, white over non-white, men over women. In its strongest forms, this worldview is fundamentally anti-democratic and theocratic.”[18]
This worldview is deeply interwoven with many of the ideologies that brought thousands of Trump supporters – such as the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Three Percenters – out to the National Mall and into the halls of Congress. More worrying for the health of our democracy is the fact that this worldview is in perfect alignment with political authoritarianism. “It demands,” observes Jones, “deference particularly to white male charismatic leaders (even when they themselves violate communal norms) and builds identity through a politics of aggression to a shifting array of perceived out groups.” He adds, “Most notably it gives no quarter to critical thought or dissent, defending its own views as divinely ordained and beyond question.”
The need for better mental models
Let’s think back to the idea that people divide their world into two zones: the reality mindset and the mythology mindset. We seem to accept the mental models (our beliefs about how the world works) that appear to best fit our mindset. They are personal, internal representations of external reality that we use to interact with the world around us. We construct them, mostly unconsciously, based on our unique life experiences, perceptions and understanding of the world. We use our mental model to reason, make decisions and evaluate new information.[19]
For example, a person might think that a flat earth resonates better with their prior beliefs about divine creation, or the inerrancy of the Bible. Thus, rejecting the belief in a flat Earth means that a gap in their mental model will be created. It is like destroying the center of the spiderweb, leaving a big hole where the spider, you, lives. To deal with this dilemma, people prefer an incorrect mental model to an incomplete one. In the absence of a better explanation, they opt for the wrong explanation.
This suggests that new mental models must be provided to replace old ones; like providing a better habitat to entice the spider to move. The evidence shows that the most effective way to reduce the effect of misinformation is to provide an alternative explanation for the events covered by the misinformation. For the alternative to be accepted, it must be plausible and explain all observed features of the event. It may require explaining why the myth is wrong, which can be achieved by exposing the rhetorical techniques used to misinform. [20]
For example, research shows that an effective covid vaccination campaign should provide compelling evidence for the safety and benefits of coronavirus vaccination, and at the same time warn that the rumors about the ineffectiveness of the vaccine should not be taken seriously because they are distributed by dedicated vaccine refusers.[21]
Another factor that makes it hard to abandon or change mental models is their strong emotional content. In recent decades, scholars have argued that none of our beliefs, rational or otherwise, have much to do with logical reasoning. “People do not deploy the powerful human intellect to dispassionately analyze the world,” writes the financial theorist and neurologist William Bernstein in his book The Delusions of Crowds. Instead, they “rationalize how the facts conform to their emotionally derived preconceptions.”[22] (See also Idea 10).
Our minds, we have seen, are better adapted to understanding remote spheres of existence through a mythology mindset, comprised of narratives for which their truth or falsity is irrelevant. “Humans understand the world through narratives,” writes Bernstein. “However, much we flatter ourselves about our individual rationality, a good story, no matter how analytically deficient, lingers in the mind, resonates emotionally, and persuades more than the most dispositive facts or data.” Storytelling is not just entertainment. It is a fundamental part of being human.
This may explain why most students have difficulty learning, and retaining, mental models that are taught in the abstract and in isolation, without explaining how they fit together like pieces of a puzzle that offers a grand picture of the world. This also suggests that narratives should be used more frequently and strategically as a teaching tool, including scientific topics. We know young children learn best through imaginative storytelling, and it seems that is true of adults too.
To conclude: Embrace complexity and uncertainty
One of the greatest achievements of science and technology is that they have made the world more predictable. Scientists, for instance, can now predict the path and intensity of storms with great precision three or four days in advance, which has saved countless lives. At the same time, though, science has shown that the world is inherently complex and unpredictable. According to quantum mechanics, a subatomic particle like an electron can be anywhere and everywhere at once, and a pair of particles once associated would be eternally connected, even if they were light-years apart (see Idea 1). In other words, complexity is the way things are. And for many humans, this is scary and unsettling.
What all this means is that, while we can still be certain about many things, much remains unknown. We know climate change is real, but that does not mean that we can predict exactly when or where the next storm or wildfire will occur and how destructive they will be. Likewise, we have learned much about the coronavirus, even developed an effective vaccine in record time, but epidemiologists are unable to predict how the virus will mutate, or when or where the next pandemic will arise. Many people find this painful and frustrating and, we saw, are attracted to populists and self-declared experts that “explain” the world to them.
Embracing complexity and uncertainty means acknowledging that we do not have the answers, and we do not know the outcome. It also means being willing to think and lead in new ways. Complexity and uncertainty can be the drivers for progress and innovation. As the author and businesswoman Margaret Heffernan writes in her 2020 book Uncharted, “Many of the most inspired people start in a place of uncertainty, are filled with doubt, yet arrive triumphant at places of life they could not see when they set out… These individuals were prepared to navigate the unknown in pursuit of the ill-defined because they realized that the only way to know the future is to make it.”[23] Thus, dear reader, I invite you to make the future.
[1] “Why hundreds of QAnon supporters showed up in Dallas, expecting JFK Jr.’s return,” by Mary Kornfield, The Washington Post, Nov 2, 2021. [2]Goldberg, R. A. (2001). Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America. Yale University Press. [3]Op. Cit. [4]https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounders/nationalist-social-club-nsc. Retrieved Feb 23, 2022. [5]A 2017 national poll by Public Policy Polling found that 1% of Americans believed the Earth was flat, with an additional 6% saying they weren't sure. Thus, 7% of the population, or over 20 million people, doubt the Earth is round. Public Policy Polling, Feb 24, 2017. https://www.publicpolicypolling.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/PPP_Release_National_22417.pdf. [6]Pinker, S. (2021). Rationality: What it is, why it seems scarce, why it matters. Viking Press, pp. 300. [7]Op. Cit. pp. 300. [8]Americans’ Trust in Scientists, Other Groups Declines. Pew Research Center. Feb 15, 2022. [9]van Prooijen, J. (2016). Why education predicts decreased belief in conspiracy theories, Applied Cognitive Psychology, Nov 28, 2016. [10]“Texts Show Ginni Thomas’s Embrace of Conspiracy Theories,” by Danny Hakim, The New York Times, Mar 26, 2022. [11]Yip, J. & Schweitzer, M. E. (2016). Mad and Misleading: Incidental Anger Promotes Deception, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Oct 1, 2016. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2478692. [12]“Why do smart Republicans say stupid things?” by Dana Millbank, The Washington Post, Mar 28, 2020. See also The Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School. http://www.culturalcognition.net/. [13]Douglas, K., Sutton, R., & Cichocka, A. (2017). The psychology of conspiracy theories. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26, 538-542. [14]MJ Wood, KM Douglas, RM Sutton. (2012). Dead and alive: Beliefs in contradictory conspiracy theories. Social Psychological and Personality Science. 3 (6), 767-773. [15]Uscinski J. E., et al., (2021) “Who Supports QAnon? A Case Study in Political Extremism,” available at joeuscinski.com. [16]“How to Think Outside Your Brain,” by Annie Murphy Paul, The New York Times, June 11, 2021. [17] “Mass Delusion in America: What I heard from insurrectionists on their march to the Capitol,” By Jeffrey Goldberg. The Atlantic, Jan 6, 2021. [18]Jones, R. P. (2020). White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, Simon & Schuster, pp. 37. [19] Jones, N. A. et al. (2011). Mental models: an interdisciplinary synthesis of theory and methods, Ecology and Society 16(1):46 [20]Ecker, U. K., Lewandowsky. S. & Tang D. T. (2011). Explicit warnings reduce but do not eliminate the continued influence of misinformation. Memory & Cognition, 38, 1087-1100. [21]Savolainen, R, (2022). Defending and refuting information sources rhetorically: The case of COVID-19 vaccination. SAGE Journals. Published online, Aug 5, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1177/09610006221111196. [22]Bernstein, W. J. (2021). The Delusions of Crowds: Why People Go Mad in Groups. The Atlantic Monthly Press. [23]Heffernan, M. (2020). Uncharted: How uncertainty can power change. Simon & Schuster. pp. 9.
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