Reading Hatfill’s history is a profile of distortion and half-truths (and even blatant lies if one includes certain of his degree certificates), but yet being able to convince large numbers of seemingly intelligent people to hire him and trust him, while he criticized and undermined “out-group” experts such as Dr Anthony Fauci and FDA commissioner Steven Hahn, at one point telling Fauci that he was “full of crap”. The damage done by people like Hatfill is hard to overstate and harder to quantify.
Why some people believe lies (indeed, NEED to believe)
Erik Hoffer (1951) coined the phrase “the True Believer.” He believed that there are true believers at both ends of the political spectrum—as does Milton Rokeach (1960) who wrote about the “open and closed mind.” For both Hoffer and Rokeach the key point was the deep entrenchment in a specific ideology and view of the world that dictated loyalty to a specific (and often quite small) group of people (might appropriately be called a “tribe”). True belief also dictated a specific set of criteria for determining what is ”real” and what is “false” as well as what is “right” and what is “wrong.” The role played by lies and misinformation is central to this closed-minded belief system. The question becomes: why do some people end up painted in an ideological corner?
One answer focuses on leadership. When people feel out of control, and their way of life is threatened, they will tend to align themselves with leaders who speak emotionally and directly to their fears and provide solutions – truthful, practical or not. As previously noted, people with less education, poor critical thinking and an “authoritarian personality type” are more susceptible to this kind of persuasion. Indeed, as Danesi observes, manipulative leaders are skilled at “weakening our ability to think clearly and to reason about things critically”.
Another answer relates to the biological state of the true believers at any one point in time. Our ability to think clearly may be weakened when we are faced with evaluating truth (and morality). We are tiered after a long day of work—or after a lifetime of fighting for a viable place in society—or even survival. When fatigue sets in, we are susceptible to what Daniel Kahneman (2013) calls “fast thinking.” Like Kahneman, his fellow behavioral economic, Dan Ariely (2012, p. 100) points to the tired brain. “[W]hen our deliberative reasoning ability is occupied, the impulsive system gains more control over our behavior.” Ariely goes on to identify this fatigue as “Ego depletion” and sets this up in opposition to self-control [or what many psychologists call “ego-strength”) Ego-depletion is based on a well-research assumption that “resisting temptation takes considerable effort and energy.” Ariely (2012, p. 101)
Janice Wood (2022) goes even further. Researchers at the University of Western Australia noted that “rejecting information requires more cognitive effort than simply accepting that the message is true. It’s easier for a person to believe a simple lie, than to have one’s mind changed by information that is new and novel”. And when people WANT and NEED to believe the lie, it is very easy to succumb to the lie.
So, it is a matter not just of the capacity to reject temptation, it is a matter of finding it hard to say “no” to anything that immediately seems to be aligned with our own version of “reality.” As Kahneman would note, fast thinking about favorable ideas and immediately satisfying acts is much more “tempting” and much easier to engage than slow thinking about alternative perspectives and practices and about the longer-term consequences of making decisions and taking actions that are damaging and even disastrous over the long term (such as voting for an unqualified candidate or shooting our opponent).
