Not Born Yesterday

Why people are not as gullible as we thinkNot Born Yesterday explains how we decide who we can trust and what we should believe—and argues that we're pretty good at making these decisions. In this lively and provocative book, Hugo Mercier demonstrates how virtually all attempts at mass persuasion—whether by religious leaders, politicians, or advertisers—fail miserably. Drawing on recent findings from political science and other fields ranging from history to anthropology, Mercier shows that the narrative of widespread gullibility, in which a credulous public is easily misled by demagogues and charlatans, is simply wrong.Why is mass persuasion so difficult? Mercier uses the latest findings from experimental psychology to show how each of us is endowed with sophisticated cognitive mechanisms of open vigilance. Computing a variety of cues, these mechanisms enable us to be on guard against harmful beliefs, while being open enough to change our minds when presented with the right evidence. Even failures—when we accept false confessions, spread wild rumors, or fall for quack medicine—are better explained as bugs in otherwise well-functioning cognitive mechanisms than as symptoms of general gullibility.Not Born Yesterday shows how we filter the flow of information that surrounds us, argues that we do it well, and explains how we can do it better still.

"A bracing book that might make you less gullible about gullibility."---Barbara Kiser, Nature, "At the risk of being seen as credulous, I’d say [Mercier] makes a strong case for gullibility being a far less prevalent and important trait than we thought.", "[Not Born Yesterday] will be of interest to anyone who wonders how to trust what people say and do, especially in the digital, free-for-all age of unfettered, often suspect, information. The breadth and depth of research studies presented by Mercier will be especially appealing to science aficionados."---Karen Koenig, New York Journal of Books, "In Not Born Yesterday, the cognitive scientist Hugo Mercier brings the conceptual reversal to a domain in desperate need of new insights: that of truth and falsehood, knowledge and ignorance."---N. J. Enfield, Times Literary Supplement, "[Not Born Yesterday] marshals a convincing body of research . . . from history and sociology, from anthropology and from the psychology laboratory."---Timandra Harkness, UnHerd

Hugo Mercier is a cognitive scientist at the Jean Nicod Institute in Paris and the coauthor of The Enigma of Reason. He lives in Nantes, France. Twitter @hugoreasoning