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The Gullibility Of Public Stereotypes

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With the growing concern of “fake news,” public gullibility has come into question from many individuals. How can the public know what is real and what is not when even highly trusted news organizations can’t seem to publish the truth? Is it their fault or are a majority of the world’s people just gullible? In the year 2000, there was a similar problem, “with surveys in the UK reporting 63% of people believing in the paranormal and 67% in astrology” (p. 1147) A survey based study by Preece and Baxter (2000), conducted on the skepticism and gullibility in secondary school students in the United Kingdom. The seven-item study surveyed 2159 students who were grouped into “Key Stage 3 students (11-13 years), through Key Stage 4 (14-16 years), to …show more content…

He brought up how small lies where a type of deception that were low stakes, took only a little thought, and the “liar” had plenty of time to plan how they would deal with the consequences. Big lies were the opposite, requiring plenty of thought, much higher stakes, and typically had less time to plan for consequences. Harwood also discussed the misconception that when people who have limited knowledge on lies or deception hear that researchers are studying lying or deception, many tend to think that researchers are primarily focused on “big lies told with deceptive intent to protect the self and/or harm others” (Harwood, 2014) In truth, there are plenty of studies on big lies such as those, however, there is a near equal amount of studies small lies and a combination of …show more content…

The theory describes how deception involves manipulation of information in multiple forms and how it’s “a contextual problem-solving activity driven by the desire for quick, efficient, and viable communicative solutions” (McCornack et al, 2014). Also, that 4 conversational maxims exist and when one of those maxims are broken, deception occurs. The 4 maxims as defined by McCornack et al: “Quantity (the amount of relevant information that is shared), Quality (the veracity of shared information), Manner (the way in which disclosed information is expressed), and Relation (the relevance of disclosed information)” (McCornack et al, 2014). Deception can be done on purpose or unconsciously and can be anything from white-lies, big lies, or stating something that is not true. Most people who are lying know that they are lying and the same goes for stating something that is not true, but this type of deception can be a bit trickier because it’s where the unconscious tends to come into play. An example of Obvious deception could be, I state “Eating dirt has the same nutritional value as a milkshake.” Unconscious deception could be something such as this two people talking. For example, Person A is stressed about exams and Person B asks them “what’s wrong” to which Person A replies “I’m fine/tired/nothing. Person A’s response can be attributed to a

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