yesterday after weeks of battling with youtube
they removed the strike from my channel and reposted my video
debunking q anon covid conspiracy theories
in my video i was debunking a q a channel by the name
of destroying the illusion in his video he was explaining why he's
anti-mask and encouraging others to not wear masks as well
as someone who tries to teach people critical thinking skills
i feel it's important to explain why videos like his are not only wrong
but they're also dangerous if you need further evidence of what these q anon
videos are capable of look at the scenes from a recent protest
that took place in saint george utah
now hundreds have gathered here in front of the washington county administration
building calling for the end of a mass mandate saying they are tired
of not living their normal lives
not on the backs of my kids
a passionate call for action friday morning in saint george several police
officers on standby as many locals called concerns about coronavirus spikes
overblown the flu kills more than coronavirus
others calling the virus a hoax are stating that asymptomatic carriers
simply do not exist and they cannot be forced to wear mass
anywhere as citizens of the united states
if we want to wear a mask that's fine we can take care of ourselves
well this morning i was informed that the video from destroying the illusion
was taken down by youtube and i thought that this would be the
perfect time to make a prediction and discuss the psychology
of cognitive dissonance i predict that not
only will jordan safer from destroying the illusion say that youtube took down
his video because he's right but i also predict that in the
comments of this very video that you're watching right now
you'll see q anon members who now have stronger convictions
that sather was right take it from a guy who lives in las vegas that if i was to
bet you on this prediction it'd be a bad idea for you to take it
thousands of psychological studies over the years are on my side with this
prediction and today we're going to try to
understand why there's a common misconception that people from q anon
and other conspiracy groups aren't intelligent but that couldn't be further
from the truth by understanding the thoughts and
behaviors of groups like q anon we can better understand ourselves
to avoid the same thinking traps that they fall into
so in the first part of this video we're going to discuss the work from famous
psychologist leon festinger and dissonance theory but before we get
started if you're new to the rewired soul
make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell here we use critical
thinking and practice skepticism to improve our own emotional
intelligence and overall well-being and as usual all of the books that i
reference will be linked down in the description below their affiliate links
so when you use my links to read these awesome books a little bit comes back to
support the channel leon fessinger was a psychologist who
came up with one of the most important psychological theories when it comes to
understanding why we humans can sometimes be so
irrational festinger and his fellow researchers
tell the story of the origins of dissonance theory
in their 1956 book when prophecy fails a social and psychological study
of a modern group that predicted the destruction of the world
in the 1950s a group by the name of the seekers
believed that on december 21st 1954 god was going to flood the earth and
aliens were going to save the chosen ones in their flying saucer
the seekers were led by a woman by the name of marion keach
which was an alias to help protect her identity
before creating this group keach followed scientology and she believed
that she could communicate directly with an
alien species from the planet clarion keats started to gain followers and over
time they started to proselytize others members of the group quit their
jobs dropped out of school and sold all of their possessions in preparation
for the end of the world through her quote unquote communications
with the aliens keith told members that they needed to
remove all metal from their person before being lifted into the flying
saucers as well the problem was that when the saucers
were coming changed a few times so the members were regularly told to
remove any metal that they were wearing when leon fessinger and his fellow
researchers heard about the seekers much like we're now predicting with queuing
on he predicted that when the aliens did
not come it would just strengthen the seeker's
beliefs and to fully document everything some of the researchers infiltrated the
seekers to have a firsthand experience of what went on and by the way i highly
highly highly recommend that you read that book if you want to learn more
about this story so as you've probably guessed on
december 21st the end of the world did not happen and aliens did not come
afterward the researchers followed up with marion keach and the other seekers
and festinger's prediction was correct keach and her followers believed
that they ended up saving the world due to their strong
faith so their beliefs grew even stronger
after the disconfirmation cognitive dissonance explains why members of
groups like humanon and the seekers have such a difficult time seeing the
reality of the situation dissonance happens when the mind holds
two incompatible beliefs and in order to ease dissonance the mind
comes up with post-hoc rationalization after researching the seekers fessinger
found that there are five conditions that can strengthen cognitive dissonance
when we understand these conditions we can better understand
what's going on with the q anon members so
here are the five conditions number one a belief must be held with deep
conviction and it must have some relevance
to action that is to what the believer does
or how he or she behaves two the person holding the belief must have
committed himself to it that is for the sake of his belief
he must have taken some important action that is difficult
to undo in general the more important such
actions are and the more difficult they are to undo
the greater is the individual's commitment
to the belief number three the belief must be sufficiently specific and
sufficiently concerned with the real world
so that events may unequivocally refute the belief
number four such undeniable disconfirmatory evidence must occur
and must be recognized by the individual holding the belief
and number five the individual believer must have social support
it is unlikely that one isolated believer could withstand the kind of
disconfirming evidence that has been specified if
however the believer is a member of a group
of convinced persons who can support one another the belief may be maintained and
the believers may attempt to proselytize or persuade non-members
that the belief is correct so of all these convictions
festinger believed that the strongest factor was that last one
social support groups like q on strengthen their beliefs
due to the fact that they all reinforce one another's beliefs
as a recovering drug addict who has helped many people get sober
a saying that i've personally passed on to others is
always travel in groups of three because it's easier for
two people to think that really bad ideas
are really good
i'm under no delusion of thinking that all q members will see my video and
understand the problems with their beliefs
but i do hope that i can impact just at least a few of them
more importantly i do this work to help us better understand ourselves
and the world around us i've had many of you leave comments or reach out and say
thank you because you better understand the loved
one who fell into the q anon rabbit hole and others come to simply learn a little
bit more about why we think the things that we do
and do the things that we do although people like jordan sather from
destroying the illusion and other q a members are spreading dangerous ideas
none of us are safe from cognitive dissonance or
other biases of our minds one of the most well-versed people on
this subject is professor jonathan height from the university of virginia
he's also the author of one of my favorite books the righteous mind
why good people are divided by politics and religion
height explains that we think it's a scientist in our mind who argues our
point but in reality it's really more like a
lawyer who is trying to justify our emotions
and what we already believe in his book the political brain
the role of emotion in deciding the faith of the nation
professor drew weston tells of a study he did where he presented people with
information that challenged their political beliefs
weston's team used fmri brain scans to see how the
brain responded to this information when the person was asked to discuss the
information that they were presented with
while you would think that people would argue from the rational part of the
brain the prefrontal cortex to defend their beliefs the emotional
part of the brain was the part that was doing all of the
work like jonathan height theorized our inner lawyer defends our beliefs not
the inner scientist while we may not be able to pull
everyone out of the rabbit hole we can all learn more about our own minds to
catch ourselves when we fall into our own self-deception personally i'm
constantly reading books that help me better understand how
flawed my thinking can be currently i'm reading hide and seek the
psychology of self-deception by neil burton and i just finished the
phenomenal book the art of thinking clearly by rolf dobelli
at the end of the day none of us will ever be entirely rid of our own
self-deception and ego defenses but we can avoid falling into cognitive
traps like q anon by gaining knowledge and becoming more
self-aware
all right everybody thanks for watching this video and again like always down in
the description i've linked all of the books that i reference
in this video all right they're all amazing books and i highly recommend
you check out what prophecy fails um i recently just read it after wanting to
read it for a long time like if there's a psychological
theory that i'm really fascinated with i love reading an entire book about it and
this one was great because it was all about the origins of
it but anyways when it comes to cognitive dissonance
like anybody who's ever taken a psychology class they like throw this
word around right but it's important to understand that we
can all struggle with it we all have our own biases and our own motivated
motivated reasoning and all these things that cloud our judgment
especially when we're discussing serious topics like
wearing masks getting vaccinated we're coming up on the elections pretty soon
there's going to be a lot of arguments on a lot of debates
and what helps me have better discussions and calmer discussions
is understanding not only what's going on in the other person's mind
but my own mind as well like it's so important to look at these
different studies and understand how our inner lawyer
is defending things and sometimes we're being completely irrational
so what we want to do is what nobel prize
winner daniel kahneman says activate our system two
which is the most more rational part of the brain and that only happens when we
pause and really think about things all right but anyways that's all i got
for this video if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you're new
make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell a huge thank you to
everybody who supports the channel by uh being up over there on patreon or
getting my books from the rewired soul.com or getting
books by using my affiliate link down in the description below
uh that helps support the channel as well and a huge thanks to everybody who
supports the channel by getting merch from the merch store you are
all awesome all right thanks again for watching i'll see you next time