User:Kimperry/sandbox

Article Evaluation Poisoning the Well

'''Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?''' The article was distracting due to referencing multiple individuals and their works. Specifically, the John Henry Newman portion with his work on Apologia Pro Vita Sua was ambiguous. Even the example and structure seem to require individuals to know a bit about philosophy, where really it could utilize some science (psychology) for support '''Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?''' The article is biased towards philosophy. This is not a bad thing in itself, but it would really benefit from a more rounded perspective and showing real world application of the material (such as utilizing psychology to explain or show the logical fallacy and then give a concrete example of its effects).

Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented? As previously stated, I believe that this article is primarily focused on its philosophical background, but lacks some scientific backing or experimented examples.

'''Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article?''' Of the three links provided, they all did work and seem to support the article. The links however were not very scientific or academic, so it is difficult to discern the overall accuracy.

'''Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted?''' There are very minimal references used in this article, with most of them just being attributing quotes to the original author. This is honestly not a great article, but it was one of the larger links from our topic of Anchoring for this week.

'''Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?''' All of the information seems to be referencing articles that are utilizing sources from before the 1900s or assuming that it is common knowledge. It would be great to see updated research or application of this material.

'''Check out the Talk page of the article. What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?''' People are mostly discussing the spelling for some of the technical words, as well as having a meta-discussion on the theory. A great comment from someone is the fact that they are asking the difference from poisoning the well and ad hominem, which no one has answered.

'''How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?''' This article is a part of the WikiProject Philosophy and is rated as Start-Class and Mid-importance.

How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class? This topic was not explicitly discussed in class, however we did touch on how anchoring an individual by giving them a prior set of information biases their judgment or guestimate. -- Looking at how the psychology influences political rationalization. This page is incredibly relevant due to the ongoing investigation with Russian involvement in the US national election. A large amount of articles are looking at how gullible people are to falling for political tactics, and the psychology involved with it.

I am not sure how to share a sandbox, so I am just going to copy paste my stuff into this sandbox.

Psychological influences
Overview

PPR is based on the construct of rationalization within a sociological and psychological domain. In psychology, rationalization is explicitly defined by the DSM-IV as when, "the individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by concealing the true motivations for his or her own thoughts, actions, or feelings through the elaboration of reassuring or self serving but incorrect explanations." Claude Steele described this as a defense mechanism developed to protect the self from dissenting opinions or decisions, thereby reaffirming an individual's own beliefs. This sense of self-affirmation has been shown to strengthen when accompanied in a group setting, called groupthink.

Contributing Theories

Groupthink refers to a state of mind when a group of people overlook their personal decisions and motivations in order to maintain the relationship of the in-group. Using groupthink, individuals are at risk of influence from others. This could result in the individual agreeing with unfounded ideas or credibility because many members of a particular group adhere to it in a desire to maintain cohesion. Janis also found that intelligence did not factor into the likelihood for groupthink, however agreeableness and self-identification were strong factors. An example of groupthink exists within sociopolitical research across academia. In their famous review, Inbar and Lammers found a bias of research favoring or utilizing liberal participants over conservative. They suggest that this groupthink towards liberal participants may be affecting sociological, psychological, and political research that is being generalized to the overall population. This finding suggests that people across various domains and intelligence are susceptible to groupthink.

add more theories?

Psychological constructs

Cognitive dissonance also plays a strong roll in how the self rationalizes a real or perceived inconsistency with the self's beliefs. When an individual acts in a manner that does not match their internal beliefs, there is a mental conflict. In order to override this dissonance, the person must either change the behavior, or change their beliefs. As seen with groupthink, individuals adapt their behavior in order to maintain status-quo with the group. In a political setting, this could be incredibly dangerous.

In their 2013 literature review, Lodge and Taber looked at the components of a rationalizing voter. Their review touched on the psychological constructs of automaticity, affect, long-term memory, and cognitive bias. They argue that voters utilize their beliefs and attitudes to construct heuristics to make judgments about political decisions. When creating these heuristics and recalling memories, voters utilize long-term memory to construct a cohesive picture that mirrors what they believe to match their political beliefs. This is important when to consider voters in the booth trying to recall what they know about the campaigning candidates. Utilizing heuristics, voters will recall items that are the most salient within memory. This ability to recall items can be impacted by the availability heuristic and representative heuristic.

-Discuss availability and representative heuristic? Outside the scope of this section?

-How Gullible Are We? A Review of the Evidence From Psychology and Social Science http://psycnet.apa.org.proxy.lib.odu.edu/fulltext/2017-22175-001.pdf

·rationalize a particular political position. In some cases, PPR might also be a defense mechanism against being branded with a negative image by an opponent through active exploitation of

·Due to the highly subjective nature of both broadcaster and target audience perceptions, it is difficult to definitively label a particular messaging campaign as being an example of PPR.