When I was in college, I had an intro English writing class where the teacher would pick a controversial essay from a major publication every week, and you had to post your response to it on the class message board. And then we would all talk about it in class the next session.
Even though the prof would pick a wide range of stances, sometimes literally 180 degrees opposite opinion pieces on the same topic, every single week, 95% of the class would respond by agreeing with what the article said.
It felt more like a social psych experiment than a college class. A lot of people seriously just get their entire ideology from the last thing they read or heard or saw on TV 5 minutes ago.
I think you are right, that contributes to it to a degree, but I would also say that doing this over and over in an educational setting (i.e., not being taught actual proactive critical thinking) probably conditions you to do the same thing in non-grade-motivated settings in "real life".
I'd be interested in seeing some kind of study on this, because my first instinct is to say the students in an intro class probably have an easier time agreeing with any given piece of information in front of them. Articulating a response is more effort. Since they truly don't care either way, they go for the easiest route that will get them the grades.
Not to stereotype, but I only ever saw college students have informed, complex ideologies if that ideology was also their chosen academic pursuit, like polisci or philosophy students.
That's super interesting and I think that this is how a lot of effective propaganda works. If you hear a particular narrative over and over again it becomes that last thing you just heard.
I guess the good news is that people are open to having their minds changed (at least young people are) if you provide them a with a new viewpoint and tools to deconstruct those narratives that we are being spoon-fed
When I was in college, I had an intro English writing class where the teacher would pick a controversial essay from a major publication every week, and you had to post your response to it on the class message board. And then we would all talk about it in class the next session.
Even though the prof would pick a wide range of stances, sometimes literally 180 degrees opposite opinion pieces on the same topic, every single week, 95% of the class would respond by agreeing with what the article said.
It felt more like a social psych experiment than a college class. A lot of people seriously just get their entire ideology from the last thing they read or heard or saw on TV 5 minutes ago.
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I think you are right, that contributes to it to a degree, but I would also say that doing this over and over in an educational setting (i.e., not being taught actual proactive critical thinking) probably conditions you to do the same thing in non-grade-motivated settings in "real life".
I'd be interested in seeing some kind of study on this, because my first instinct is to say the students in an intro class probably have an easier time agreeing with any given piece of information in front of them. Articulating a response is more effort. Since they truly don't care either way, they go for the easiest route that will get them the grades.
Not to stereotype, but I only ever saw college students have informed, complex ideologies if that ideology was also their chosen academic pursuit, like polisci or philosophy students.
That's super interesting and I think that this is how a lot of effective propaganda works. If you hear a particular narrative over and over again it becomes that last thing you just heard.
I guess the good news is that people are open to having their minds changed (at least young people are) if you provide them a with a new viewpoint and tools to deconstruct those narratives that we are being spoon-fed