Political parties and power groups already know that hate and disinformation are strategies with which they have a lot to gain when it comes to attracting or discouraging votes. They have been using them for a long time in their campaigns and declarations. It has been proven that hate displaces rational thought, brings out the most emotional and reinforces the associated content, explained Virginia Martín, professor of Journalism at the University of Valladolid, and Sergio Arce García, professor and researcher in Digital Communication and Social Networks at UNIR in an article published Monday in The Conversation.
And they clarified that forceful attacks against the adversary are not necessary, but that a continuous trickle of hate messages of medium and low intensity through social networks is enough for them to permeate not only among the ideologically closest population but also among voters of other parties. , which end up normalizing these contents, making society as a whole more manipulable “because those who hate together vote together.”
Now, linguist and language anthropologist Marcel Danesi has shed light on why these messages are so effective and penetrating, and how the brain is programmed to believe lies and conspiracy theories when the right language is used.
Danesi has just published a paper showing how language influences people’s cognition and belief mechanisms and how, depending on the words used, neural circuits can be activated to establish beliefs without going through the cognitive reasoning centers.
According to his research – collected in the book Politics, lies and conspiracy theories (Taylor
“Language is both a tool and a weapon, and when used as a weapon, the mind is negatively affected by activating circuits that are deeply embedded in it, such as belief circuits,” Danesi explains in an email conversation.
He details that, normally, this mechanism is coordinated with reason and understanding, but “a master manipulator of words can break that coordination, bring negative beliefs to the surface and, through them, constantly activate the feelings” of the receiver.
And, having analyzed the speeches of dictators like Mussolini, Stalin, Putin and Hitler, as well as those of prominent hate groups, Danesi is clear about the weapon, the “linguistic hook” used to instill and spread hate. towards others: dehumanizing metaphors.
Words like “pests,” “reptiles,” or “parasites” were used by the Nazi regime to compare foreigners or people belonging to minorities to animals. And the same thing was done by white supremacist groups in the US and by populist and far-right political movements now to create hatred towards foreigners or towards those who escape the pattern they defend.
“Metaphor is one of the main pathways to the belief system of the mind because it has the ability to connect domains of meaning that are normally kept separate and that when mixed create their own truth,” argues the professor of semiotics and linguistic anthropology. from the University of Toronto (Canada).
And he offers an example: “If someone is labeled as a parasite, the brain begins to see that person metamorphosing into an insect in the imagination; If this metaphor is repeated constantly, we begin to make little distinction between that type of person and the insect, because the two concepts merge into a unity of thought and are rarely managed to disconnect with words and arguments.
Danesi admits that he doesn’t know why this happens, but he does know that metaphors have the power to activate false belief systems buried in the mind, which take advantage of existing circuits in the brain that link important images and ideas bypassing the cognitive reasoning centers. superiors, causing thoughts to focus on certain things while ignoring others “which often leads to anger and hatred against specific individuals or groups.”
The anthropologist explains that, in addition, the more these circuits are activated, the more neural connections are established “until it becomes almost impossible to turn them off.” Hence, he says, once people start to believe lies or conspiracy theories, they are unlikely to change their minds even if presented with evidence that contradicts their beliefs.
“Once we’ve taken the linguistic bait of the lying teacher, anything that supports his views, no matter how false, will be seen as evidence of ‘the truth’ and thus the false beliefs are further reinforced,” Danesi says. .
And the same goes for conspiracy theories: once immersed in that fabricated narrative, there is almost no way out of it because events in the world are interpreted in accordance with it and as “proof” that it is true. He adds that, in addition, people manipulated by lies will reject news that does not confirm their beliefs or interpret it as evidence that some entity is conspiring to dissuade them from “the truth.”
Neuroscientists explain that this has a lot to do with the way the brain works. Beatriz Fagundo, a doctor in cognitive neuroscience, says that “the brain has a hard time – that is, it spends a lot of energy – to create learning, a specific pattern of neuron activation, and once it has created it, it saves it to be able to retrieve it, so that when he receives information that is in line with what he has already learned, it is easier for him, and for this reason he has a tendency to believe and accept as good what fits with what he has learned”.
On the other hand, the brain ignores the information that does not fit with the previous patterns “because it generates cognitive dissonance, because it is telling the brain that it is wrong, and that costs a lot and causes discomfort,” says the neuroscientist.
