Fake News Online and Personal Mantras

Thinking, Fast and Slow: Chapters 3 & 4
Student’s Name
Institution
Fake News Online and Personal Mantras
Chapter 3: The Lazy Controller
The book by Kahneman (2011) is quite an eye-opener, and through it, I have managed to reflect on one of the instances where I found myself avoiding exerting a little more effort in thinking. In 2016, at the peak of the U.S. presidential campaign, I became a victim of the effects of System 1’s impulsivity and immediate gratification seeking. It is good to remember that it was in 2016, during the presidential campaigns, that fake news escalated (Bovet & Makse, 2019). During the heightened election campaigns, I would easily share news articles that promoted my political affiliation. I did not care to check whether the news was factual or not. Sometimes, I did not even bother to read the news articles to find out more about the topic. Instead, I would just see a title that affirmed my political beliefs and brazenly shared them on social media. Most of the articles had been shared by the other, and I didn’t find a problem sharing them. Later on, when I started reading about how fake news had permeated the political discussion (Crawford, 2017), I realized that some of the news I shared on social media were fake.
I believe this is a great example of how System 1, which is impulsive and intuitive, as pointed out by Kahneman, drives us to engage in actions without reasoning. In my case, I perceived researching more about the issue or actually reading the article to involve a lot of effort. Had I been more alert, I would not be satisfied with the superficial titles of the articles. Instead, I would have engaged System 2 and taken time to examine whether what I was sharing was true or not.
Chapter 4: Priming
After reading chapter 4, an example of priming that has occurred to me has been through Yoga. The Indian practice has made it to the Western world in recent years. According to Mocanu ...