國家地理:我們?yōu)槭裁凑f謊(8)
Much of the knowledge we use to navigate the world comes from what others have told us. Without the implicit trust that we place in human communication, we would be paralyzed as individuals and cease to have social relationships. "We get so much from believing, and there's relatively little harm when we occasionally get duped," says Tim Levine, a psychologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who calls this idea the truth default theory.
許多我們用來探索世界的知識(shí)來源于他人的口中，沒有我們?cè)谌穗H交往中的隱含信任，我們就會(huì)受限于個(gè)體，并且不再具有社會(huì)關(guān)系。伯明翰阿拉巴馬大學(xué)的心理學(xué)家蒂姆·萊文提出的真相默認(rèn)理論指出，“我們從信仰中收獲頗豐，當(dāng)我們偶爾被欺騙時(shí)，傷害是較小的?！?/p>
Being hardwired to be trusting makes us intrinsically gullible. "If you say to someone, 'I am a pilot,' they are not sitting there thinking: 'Maybe he's not a pilot. Why would he say he's a pilot?' They don't think that way," says Frank Abagnale, Jr., a security consultant whose cons as a young man, including forging checks and impersonating an airline pilot, inspired the 2002 movie Catch Me if You Can. "This is why scams work, because when the phone rings and the caller ID says it's the Internal Revenue Service, people automatically believe it is the IRS. They don't realize that someone could manipulate the caller ID."
信任是天生的，這使我們本質(zhì)上容易受騙?！叭绻愀嬖V別人‘我是一個(gè)飛行員’，他們不會(huì)坐在那里想：‘也許他不是一個(gè)飛行員，為什么他要說自己是一個(gè)飛行員呢？’這不是他們思考的方式。” 安全顧問弗蘭克·阿巴內(nèi)爾說。弗蘭克在年輕時(shí)偽造支票并冒充航空公司的飛行員，他的經(jīng)歷成了2002年上映的電影《逍遙法外》的靈感源?！斑@就是詐騙行為起作用的原因，因?yàn)楫?dāng)電話響起，來電顯示表明對(duì)方是國稅局時(shí)，人們自然會(huì)相信是國稅局。他們沒有意識(shí)到有人可以操縱來電顯示?！?/p>
Robert Feldman, a psychologist at the University of Massachusetts, calls that the liar's advantage. "People are not expecting lies, people are not searching for lies," he says, "and a lot of the time, people want to hear what they are hearing." We put up little resistance to the deceptions that please us and comfort us -- be it false praise or the promise of impossibly high investment returns. When we are fed falsehoods by people who have wealth, power, and status, they appear to be even easier to swallow, as evidenced by the media's credulous reporting of Lochte's robbery claim, which unraveled shortly thereafter.
馬薩諸塞大學(xué)的心理學(xué)家羅伯特·費(fèi)爾德曼稱這是騙子的優(yōu)勢(shì)。他說：“人們并不期待謊言，人們也并不在尋找謊言，很多時(shí)候，人們都愿意聽取他們聽到的聲音?！蔽覀儙缀醪环磳?duì)給我們帶來歡喜與安慰的欺騙，無論是虛假的贊美還是不可估量的高投資回報(bào)的承諾。當(dāng)我們被擁有財(cái)富、權(quán)力和地位的人欺騙時(shí)，似乎更容易輕信謊言，正如媒體輕信了羅切特的搶劫聲明，而這件事不久后就真相大白。
Researchers have shown that we are especially prone to accepting lies that affirm our worldview. Memes that claim Obama was not born in the United States, deny climate change, accuse the U.S. government of masterminding the terrorist strikes of September 11, 2001, and spread other "alternative facts," as a Trump adviser called his Inauguration crowd claims, have thrived on the Internet and social media because of this vulnerability. Debunking them does not demolish their power, because people assess the evidence presented to them through a framework of preexisting beliefs and prejudices, says George Lakoff, a cognitive linguist at the University of California, Berkeley. "If a fact comes in that doesn't fit into your frame, you'll either not notice it, or ignore it, or ridicule it, or be puzzled by it -- or attack it if it's threatening."
研究人員表明，我們特別容易接受那些印證我們的世界觀的謊言。奧巴馬并未出生在美國，否認(rèn)氣候變化，指責(zé)美國政府策劃“9·11事件”，并傳播其他“替代事實(shí)”（特朗普的顧問在回答關(guān)于總統(tǒng)就職典禮參與人數(shù)的問題時(shí)提出該詞），諸如此類的梗之所以在互聯(lián)網(wǎng)和社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)上大肆傳播，正是因?yàn)檫@種弱點(diǎn)。加州大學(xué)伯克利分校的認(rèn)知語言學(xué)家喬治·拉科夫說，揭穿謊言并不駁倒謊言，因?yàn)槿藗兺ㄟ^一個(gè)預(yù)先存在的信仰和偏見的框架來評(píng)估提供給他們的證據(jù)。“如果一個(gè)事實(shí)不符合你的框架，你將不會(huì)注意到它，或者忽略它，或者嘲笑它，或?qū)λ械嚼Щ?，或者判定它是威脅的話就攻擊它。”
