Is Your Mind Vaccinated?

In 1796, Edward Jenner realized that you could lie to a human body. By exposing an eight-year-old boy to a weak, harmless version of a disease – cowpox – he effectively "tricked" the boy's immune system into preparing for a war that hadn't happened yet. When the actual, deadly smallpox arrived the body wasn't surprised.

Edward invented a vaccine. It's a way of teaching the body how to fight a ghost so it can survive the real thing.

Can you vaccinate a thought?

Psychologist William McGuire asked that exact question. He called it Inoculation Theory. The idea is that if I give you a "weak" version of a bad argument – and then show you exactly how to dismantle it – your brain develops "cognitive antibodies".

It works. It really works. But it leaves us with a very... itchy question.

Pre-Persuaded Mind

The opposite of an "itchy question" is a soothing answer. And in the world of influence, there is nothing more soothing than being told you are already right. But while an itch tells you something is wrong, a "soothing answer" tells you that you don't need to think anymore.

Think about it. To "protect" you, I have to decide which ideas are the viruses and which are the cures. I have to build the "weak" version of the counter-argument for you to practice on. I am priming the reaction you will have before the real stimulus ever arrives.

Inoculation is influence. It is a specific script pre-loaded into the mind to act as a barrier against a different script. The inoculated mind follows a set of "correct" refutations provided by the vaccinator. The reach of persuasion remains, only the author of the lines has changed.

A "segment" of your brain is cordoned off during this process. "Segment" comes from the Latin segmentum, meaning "a piece cut off." By cutting yourself off from "bad" ideas, you allow the vaccinator to define the boundary of "good" ones.

Which brings us to the "Universal Solvent" of the Enlightenment: Media Literacy.

Literacy feels like a light turning on in a dark room. You can suddenly see the "Who," the "What," and the "Why." But what happens when we turn that light into a standardized procedure?

Give people a flashlight – teach them to "think for themselves", tell them to ask, "Who made this?" and "What is their motive?".

Training can increase skepticism.

But turning flashlight on is one thing, and pointing it in the right deirection is the second.

Smart Idiot

In 2017, researchers at Yale identified the "Smart Idiot Effect".

Some people use their sophisticated critical thinking tools like a high-powered sniper rifle – but they only point it at the things they already dislike. When an idea they love comes along? The safety is on. The rifle stays in the case.

Education doesn't always provide coordinates of the truth. Sometimes, it just provides better ammunition for your favorite lie. The highly educated aren't necessarily less likely to believe falsehoods – they're just less likely to believe unfashionable ones. They'll reject the "dumb" conspiracy theory, but defend the "sophisticated" one.

But why do we do this? Why use our brains to protect falsehoods? Maybe it's because the truth is boring and heavy. And on the internet, heavy things don't move very fast.

Speed of Wrong

In 2019, a team at MIT analyzed 126,000 stories shared on Twitter. They found that false news stories were 70% more likely to be retweeted than true ones. The "fake" reached the first 1500 people six times faster than the "true."

The detail that sticks more that the speed is the people.

Spreaders of this information weren't bots or uneducated trolls. They were ordinary people. Many had degrees. Many believed they were good at "thinking for themselves."

The problem is that "media literacy" is a set of tools, and tools don't have a moral compass. A hammer can build a house, or it can be used to keep people out of one. We want to be immune to influence. We want to be the ones who "know better."

But the most dangerous bad idea is the one that convinces you that you're the only one in the room who's already been vaccinated.