There is now a wealth of studies in experimental psychology showing that people, instead of accepting everything they read or hear, consider a variety of cues to decide how much they should listen to others. People aren’t gullible they aren’t easy to fool into believing unfounded things. Which is it? Are we more gullible than we think, or are others less gullible than we think? Clearly, not everyone can be right on this. After all, you might think, how could so many people be so wrong? The problem is that everyone thinks they’re hard to influence, while others are easily swayed even by the most shallow or biased information. But do you suspect that other people’s political opinions are dictated by MSNBC, Fox News, or ads specially targeted by Cambridge Analytica? Maybe. Mercier has identified 10 things about gullibility you may not know.ġ) People believe they’re not gullible, but other people areĭo you feel like your political opinions are strongly influenced by the ads you see on TV or on Facebook? Probably not. Drawing 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. 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.

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.

Not Born Yesterday by Hugo Mercier