Mass Delusion Has Better PR Than Truth

 Just because a lie is cheered from every rooftop does not make it divine. Popularity is not proof. It is just loud agreement among the misinformed.

The world does not fear lies. It only fears unpopular truths. We live in a time where the louder a belief echoes, the more sacred it becomes. Where the metric of rightness is not rooted in reason or evidence, but in retweets, applause, and viral momentum. Welcome to the age where misinformation wears a tuxedo and truth stands barefoot in the hallway, waiting for someone to grow a spine.

Just because an idea is popular does not mean it is correct. In fact, popularity often signals the exact opposite. The crowd does not chase clarity. It chases comfort. And comfort is the twin sibling of self-deception. History is bloated with examples of widely embraced ideas that were nothing more than polished madness. Slavery was once a policy. Burning women at the stake was once justice. Colonization was once civilization. And all of them were mainstream. All of them had cheerleaders.

We forget that the herd rarely thinks. It repeats. It recycles what sounds good and feels right. It kneels before authority and calls it wisdom. And so the most dangerous place for the truth to stand is against what everybody believes. Because in a world drunk on agreement, dissent is heresy. People would rather belong than be right. They would rather be liked than be awake. They would rather chant the anthem of the majority than question the architecture of its logic.

That is why truth, in its rawest form, is never popular. It is inconvenient. It is abrasive. It demands intellectual sobriety. It asks you to burn your idols and question your inherited assumptions. And that is too much work for a species addicted to ease. So we brand the truth as controversial and elevate delusion as tradition. We lock up prophets and canonize performers. We silence whistleblowers and reward sycophants. Because that is how mass delusion protects itself. With rituals. With dogma. With hashtags.

What the world really fears is not being wrong. It fears being alone in being right. And so truth becomes a whisper. A rumor. A forgotten link in the group chat that nobody opens. But make no mistake. When the crowd is loud, the lie is louder.

And somebody must say it.

Popularity Is Not a Moral Compass

The human mind is easily seduced by the crowd. It assumes that if many believe something, it must hold weight. But this is not logic. This is laziness disguised as consensus. Popularity is not a moral compass. It is a mirror of the moment, not a measure of truth. And that mirror reflects whatever emotion, bias, or trend the masses are entertaining that week.

Groupthink is not wisdom. It is the intellectual version of a stampede. It tramples evidence, trashes nuance, and glorifies the path of least resistance. According to Janis (1982), groupthink thrives in environments where the desire for harmony overrides critical evaluation. When people want to belong more than they want to understand, lies are free to roam in tuxedos while truth is accused of being hostile.

We have seen this phenomenon replicate across history. Eugenics was once mainstream science. Segregation had legal approval. Witch hunts were not fringe behavior, they were society’s performance of piety. These were not the opinions of deranged individuals. They were the sanctioned views of churches, schools, courts, and intellectuals of their time. Their popularity did not cleanse them of cruelty. It only amplified their damage.

The same psychological mechanism fuels today’s ideological fads. People outsource thinking to influencers, movements, and headlines. They do not examine. They adopt. They do not challenge. They echo. The algorithm does not ask for accuracy. It rewards appeal. That is why misinformation spreads faster than truth on social platforms. A study by Vosoughi, Roy, and Aral (2018) found that false news stories on Twitter spread significantly farther, faster, and deeper than truthful ones. Not because people are malicious, but because they are neurologically addicted to novelty and emotionally biased toward affirmation.

This is why the truth rarely trends. It does not flatter the ego. It does not stroke confirmation bias. It does not promise moral superiority without sacrifice. The truth is confrontational. It is inconvenient. It is allergic to applause. And that makes it poor public relations material. Truth demands that you question your favorite beliefs and your inherited allegiances. It forces you to break rank with your tribe. That level of intellectual integrity is terrifying to a society raised on likes and validation.

Mass delusion, however, is seductively democratic. It tells you that numbers equal correctness. That comfort equals morality. That agreement equals enlightenment. But these are illusions with good marketing. And every time a society has traded discernment for popularity, the result has been moral decay dressed in cultural pride.

There is no safety in numbers when the crowd is blind. There is no virtue in applause when the performance is fraudulent. To believe what is popular without asking why it is popular is to surrender your mind to the mood of the moment. And the moment, by definition, is fleeting. It does not care for truth. It only cares for traction.

To walk in truth, then, is not to walk in agreement. It is to walk alone if necessary. To stand upright in a room full of kneeling people. To think while others chant. That is the anatomy of courage. And courage, unlike popularity, does not come with a fanbase. It comes with fire.

The Loudest Voice Is Not the Wisest One

Volume and wisdom have never been twins. In fact, history suggests they barely belong in the same family. Yet in the modern age, the megaphone often replaces the microscope. Whoever shouts loudest is mistaken for a leader. Whoever attracts the most followers is assumed to be enlightened. And whoever interrupts the silence longest is handed credibility by default. The internet did not create this illusion. It only turbocharged it.

We now live in an attention economy, not a truth economy. And attention obeys no laws of logic. It gravitates toward spectacle, not substance. The rise of social media influencers and ideological echo chambers proves that noise is often mistaken for knowledge. According to Pennycook and Rand (2021), users on social platforms are more likely to share misinformation when their cognitive reflection is low and emotional arousal is high. Which is a scholarly way of saying that stupidity goes viral when packaged with hype.

The loudest voice is not the wisest one. It is simply the most audible. The world gives microphones to those who entertain, not those who enlighten. That is why we have motivational speakers with no credentials, political pundits who trade facts for applause, and celebrity culture that confuses visibility for virtue. The volume is high. The depth is shallow. And the consequences are generational.

True wisdom rarely shouts. It listens before speaking. It investigates before declaring. It asks better questions rather than serving up cheap answers. Wisdom is deliberate. It is often quiet. It prefers solitude over spectacle. But modern society does not reward quiet dignity. It rewards clamor. And clamor, as it turns out, has become a full-time profession. Influencers monetize opinions with no obligation to accuracy. Political figures weaponize outrage for popularity. Spiritual leaders adopt marketing strategies that rival corporate brands. It is no longer about who is right. It is about who is loudest.

The danger with this distortion is that volume creates emotional momentum. When an idea is shouted often enough, it begins to sound true. That is how propaganda works. That is how nationalism becomes religion. That is how lies dress up as gospel. The louder it is, the harder it becomes to resist. Not because it is convincing, but because silence starts to feel like isolation. And humans fear isolation more than they fear deception.

The psychological phenomenon of the "illusion of truth" explains this perfectly. According to Fazio et al. (2015), repeated statements are more likely to be judged as true, regardless of their accuracy. Familiarity breeds belief. And in a world where repetition is mistaken for reliability, loudness is a shortcut to legitimacy.

So how do we reclaim truth from the noise? By becoming immune to volume and allergic to performance. By interrogating what we hear, even if it comes with applause. By understanding that the wisest voices might not trend, but they transform. They are not loud because they do not need to be. Their truth does the work.

In a society addicted to soundbites, the thinking person is a threat. Because thought requires silence. And silence is terrifying to those whose identity is rooted in performance. The truth does not need a microphone. It needs a mind willing to engage it. A voice raised in ignorance may echo longer, but it will never stand taller than a whisper rooted in wisdom.

Consensus Is Not Evidence

There is something seductive about agreement. When a room full of people nods in unison, it creates an illusion of truth. But consensus is not evidence. It is comfort wrapped in repetition. It is the illusion that multiple people believing the same thing must somehow make it factual. But beliefs do not become facts through popularity contests. They become facts through scrutiny, through testing, through the brutality of logic and the discomfort of data.

Consensus, by its very nature, is social. It is political. It is emotional. Science, on the other hand, is not impressed by agreement. It is impressed by proof. The earth did not suddenly become round when enough people stopped calling it flat. Germs did not wait for consensus before causing disease. Evolution did not wait for applause before shaping species. Reality is not a democracy. It does not vote on truth. It simply is.

The delusion that consensus equals correctness has been the foundation of some of the most catastrophic ideologies in history. Consider the Salem witch trials, apartheid laws, or the moral panic around rock music and video games. At the time, these were not fringe beliefs. They were the consensus. Entire institutions backed them. Entire cultures endorsed them. And yet, with time, they have been unmasked as moral failures wearing the robes of agreement.

Psychologist Solomon Asch famously demonstrated this fragility of independent thought in his 1951 conformity experiments. In a room full of actors providing incorrect answers to simple questions, participants conformed to the wrong answer nearly one third of the time, just to avoid standing alone (Asch, 1951). That is not thinking. That is survival masquerading as thought. And when survival drives belief, truth is always the first casualty.

The digital age has made consensus even more seductive. Algorithms do not promote truth. They promote alignment. They amplify what you already believe, echo it back to you, and filter out contradiction. This is not education. It is indoctrination with a user interface. Pariser (2011) called this the “filter bubble”, a phenomenon where individuals are exposed only to information that aligns with their existing beliefs, reinforcing false consensus and emotional certainty.

False consensus does not just affect beliefs. It affects action. It breeds complacency. It makes injustice feel like policy. It makes apathy feel like moderation. When everyone seems to agree, people stop asking questions. And when questions die, tyranny grows in silence.

To reject the consensus is not always a sign of arrogance. Sometimes it is a sign of sanity. The greatest minds in history have been those who walked away from consensus and into controversy. Galileo challenged the church. Darwin challenged creationism. Mandela challenged apartheid. They were all branded as rebels, radicals, or heretics. But they were right.

Truth, by its very nature, does not need a crowd. It needs courage. It does not require validation. It requires vision. Consensus is a shortcut, not a compass. And if you let it replace your thinking, you will one day find yourself defending the indefensible simply because it has a majority.

The next time you find yourself nodding with the masses, ask yourself if you are thinking or just syncing. Because truth is not found where most people agree. It is found where most people dare not look.

Cultural Echo Chambers: Where Thought Goes to Die

Culture, when left unexamined, becomes a padded room where ideas echo and intelligence suffocates. It is not just tradition that kills truth. It is the reverence of tradition that does. When a society begins to treat its own beliefs as immune to question, it no longer educates. It indoctrinates. It no longer grows. It recycles. And in this ritual of repetition, truth is replaced with performance.

Cultural echo chambers are not unique to tribes, religions, or national borders. They exist wherever a group rewards loyalty to the narrative over loyalty to the truth. These environments do not produce thinkers. They produce parrots. They teach that to question is to betray. And so generations are raised to bow before heritage and fear intellectual rebellion. As Putnam (2007) notes, the more socially homogenous a group is, the less internal critique it allows. Homogeneity breeds harmony, but it also breeds cowardice in the face of complex realities.

The most dangerous feature of a cultural echo chamber is not that it preserves identity. That is often necessary. The danger lies in how it weaponizes conformity and punishes deviation. Cultural narratives often elevate myths to moral law. Whether it is the glorification of gender roles, the romanticization of suffering, or the vilification of dissenters, these stories are kept alive not because they are true, but because they are familiar. Familiarity is mistaken for truth. Tradition is mistaken for wisdom. And comfort is mistaken for moral clarity.

Modernity has only made these echo chambers more sophisticated. Now, cultural dogma comes with Instagram filters and TikTok reels. It performs morality. It packages virtue into aesthetics. But beneath the gloss is a rotten core of recycled ideas that dare not evolve. The fear of social isolation keeps people from questioning what everyone else celebrates. And so truth chokes on the incense of tradition.

Some cultures still teach that mental health is weakness. Others glorify female suffering as strength. Some sanctify obedience as a virtue while demonizing curiosity as rebellion. These are not values. These are cages. They are not designed to elevate the human condition. They are designed to preserve control. As Nisbett et al. (2001) observed, culture can deeply shape cognitive patterns, determining not just what people think, but how they think. And that is precisely why some ideas survive not because they are true, but because they are allowed to go unchallenged.

Escaping a cultural echo chamber is not about disrespecting your heritage. It is about honoring it enough to interrogate it. It is about understanding that tradition is a starting point, not a destination. Culture should inform, not imprison. It should evolve, not fossilize.

If your values cannot withstand questions, then they are not values. They are rituals of obedience. And if your beliefs feel threatened by facts, then they are not beliefs. They are emotional crutches. Real culture is not afraid of critique. It survives not because it silences dissent, but because it incorporates it.

So the next time someone wraps ignorance in tradition, do not applaud them. Hand them a question. Because culture is only sacred when it serves truth. Otherwise, it is just well-decorated stagnation.

Popularity Is Not Proof of Validity

If human history has taught us anything, it is this. Popularity is often the camouflage that falsehood wears to avoid interrogation. The fact that an idea is well received does not make it well reasoned. The applause of the masses has never been a reliable compass for truth. Crowds cheer for blood before they cheer for justice. They cheer for comfort before they cheer for clarity. And often, they cheer for lies so well told that truth starts to sound offensive.

Popularity is a currency in culture, but it is not a credential in logic. Consider the massive acceptance of junk science, commercial spirituality, and pseudo-psychological trends. From astrology apps posing as therapy to detox teas marketed as self-care, popularity has made people believe that validation equals verification. It does not. In the marketplace of ideas, the most sold item is not always the most sound. It is the most seductive.

The algorithmic age has only made things worse. The internet rewards what spreads, not what stands scrutiny. Studies show that misinformation spreads six times faster than truth on social media platforms because it evokes stronger emotional reactions (Vosoughi, Roy, & Aral, 2018). In such a climate, the line between being famous and being credible has been violently erased. TikTok influencers go viral diagnosing mental health conditions in sixty seconds. YouTube channels amass millions repeating opinions with no scientific foundation. The louder the echo, the harder it becomes to trace the origin of the voice.

This confusion between popularity and validity explains why the cult of the self has metastasized into gospel. Self-importance is now disguised as self-love. Narcissism is branded as confidence. People share ten thousand versions of mediocrity cloaked in affirmations, while critical thinking is dismissed as negativity. Just because many agree does not mean the idea has passed intellectual inspection. It only means it feels good enough to skip inspection altogether.

Even in academia and politics, bandwagon logic has crept in. Research with contradictory findings gets buried under trends that are easier to fund or publish. Politicians shape their manifestos based on trending hashtags rather than grounded needs. This is not governance. This is theatre. This is not science. This is popularity laundering.

And yet, history is full of voices that were unpopular because they were right too early. Socrates was executed. Galileo was silenced. Rosa Parks was arrested. These were not fringe lunatics. They were visionaries that society labeled dangerous simply because they refused to bow to consensus. They dared to make sense before sense became fashionable.

Validity is not decided by volume. It is decided by interrogation. If an idea cannot survive critique, it has no business thriving in public consciousness. The true test of a belief is not how many hold it, but how it holds up under fire. As Carl Sagan once remarked, “It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.” That kind of discernment is exactly what mass approval lacks.

In a world where clout outshouts credibility, the thinking person becomes a threat. To resist the pull of popular lies is to become intellectually homeless in a culture obsessed with digital applause. But better to stand alone with reason than blend in with error.

Herd Mentality Is Just Fear Wearing Camouflage

Herd mentality has never been about wisdom. It has always been about safety. It is the silent agreement that keeps people in line, not because the line makes sense, but because leaving it might get you devoured. It is evolutionary biology meeting psychological cowardice. In the wild, herds stick together to survive predators. In society, people stick to opinions to survive judgment. But make no mistake. Herds do not create innovation. They create stagnation. They do not create pioneers. They crucify them.

This is not a metaphor. It is observable. In a series of famous studies, psychologist Muzafer Sherif demonstrated that individuals would shift their perceptions of moving light in a dark room simply to conform with group consensus, even when their original perception was accurate (Sherif, 1936). In simple terms, they betrayed their senses to belong. They gave up what they knew was true to avoid being the odd one out.

And the modern herd is far more insidious. It has hashtags. It has sponsored content. It has influencer approval. People now do not just fear physical exile. They fear social erasure. Online cancel culture has weaponized conformity into a survival strategy. If you want to keep your job, your audience, your peace of mind, you play along. But when everybody plays along, nobody thinks anymore. They perform. They survive. And in that performance, truth dies.

Globally, we have watched this unfold. Countries go to war based on narratives few dare to question. Cultures bury abuse behind silence because the herd demands honor over honesty. Religions defend moral contradictions to maintain their aesthetic of righteousness. People nod in agreement with ideologies they have never read and policies they barely understand. Why? Because the herd has spoken, and silence feels safer than scrutiny.

This fear-based conformity is not harmless. It is the engine behind collective moral failures. The Holocaust did not need millions of fanatics. It needed millions of obedient followers. Colonialism thrived not on evil masterminds alone, but on silent functionaries who chose conformity over conscience. When entire populations silence their intellects to mirror their peers, they become accomplices to injustice with clean hands and guilty minds.

Philosopher Hannah Arendt coined the term “the banality of evil” to describe how ordinary people become instruments of atrocities, not through hatred, but through thoughtlessness. She observed that evil is not always committed by monsters. It is committed by people who refuse to think for themselves (Arendt, 1963). That refusal begins with herd mentality.

And so today, we see people embracing opinions not because they make sense, but because they fit in. They adjust their moral compass to align with their feed. They measure their integrity by the volume of applause. That is not growth. That is regression in designer clothes.

To reject herd mentality is not to be rebellious for the sake of it. It is to demand that your brain remains operational in a world that rewards autopilot. It is to refuse to be emotionally blackmailed by groupthink. It is to insist that your conscience does not come with a mute button just because the crowd roars louder.

In a time where the loudest voice often wins, be the quiet one who asks better questions. Herds move together, but they do not always move toward truth. Sometimes they gallop straight off a cliff, applauding each other all the way down.

The Price of Unquestioned Consensus Is Intellectual Decay

The gravest danger of a widely accepted idea is not that it might be wrong. It is that its popularity insulates it from interrogation. When consensus becomes sacred, truth becomes irrelevant. What remains is intellectual rot wrapped in the velvet glove of public agreement. This decay is not loud. It is not even immediate. It is slow, polite, and applauded. But it is decay all the same.

Unquestioned consensus sterilizes thought. It murders nuance. It turns debate into taboo and critical thinking into rebellion. Ideas that go unchallenged do not remain pure. They metastasize. They become dogmas with fangs. And once society bows to them, even skeptics fall silent for fear of exile.

We have seen this in every era that has mistaken echo for enlightenment. The Church once silenced heliocentrism. The state once banned books. The academy once refused to admit women and people of color under the pretense of tradition. Each time, the consensus felt righteous. Each time, it rotted from the inside. What was popular then is laughable now. The question is, what nonsense are we sanctifying today simply because it has numbers on its side?

In today’s performative culture, conformity is not just rewarded. It is broadcast. Social media platforms amplify whatever agrees with the herd. Their algorithms curate belief bubbles so inflated, they are indistinguishable from truth. As Sunstein (2001) warned, this fragmentation creates echo chambers where people are never forced to encounter difference, and thus never forced to evolve. Intellectual laziness is no longer a sin. It is a social strategy.

The result? A society where critique is mistaken for hate, where disagreement is labeled toxic, and where emotional fragility is protected at the expense of intellectual honesty. Truth becomes filtered through feelings. Fact-checking is seen as a personal attack. And logic is branded elitist. This is not progress. It is a collective temper tantrum disguised as morality.

When people fear correction more than ignorance, they stop growing. And when they fear standing alone more than standing wrong, they become unfit for leadership, citizenship, or even basic discourse. As Orwell observed, the further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it (Orwell, 1949).

Consensus should be earned through argument, not enforced through applause. If an idea cannot withstand scrutiny, it does not deserve your loyalty. It deserves your suspicion. And if you find yourself agreeing with everyone too easily, it may be time to ask if you are thinking at all.

To protect the future of free thought, we must drag every beloved belief into the light and interrogate it. Truth does not flinch under pressure. Only lies need the shield of popularity. If you want to know what is true, do not ask how many believe it. Ask how well it survives when belief is stripped away.

The Gospel of Unthinking Agreement Ends in Cultural Bankruptcy

Popular ideas, when left unquestioned, do not just distort reality. They disfigure the human spirit. They build monuments to mediocrity and call them virtues. They exalt herd approval over personal truth. And slowly, without a scream or a siren, societies lose their capacity to think. They trade logic for likes, replace insight with influence, and install ignorance in the throne of public consciousness. What begins as a collective affirmation soon becomes a mental prison. The crowd becomes the warden. The sentence is indefinite. And the crime is simply daring to think differently.

Ideas do not become right because people shout them louder. They do not become sacred because they trend. The truth has never needed a crowd. In fact, the truth often walks alone. The danger is not in people being wrong. That is human. The danger is in people refusing to revisit what they believe simply because it is comfortable. Popularity becomes a shield. It becomes a sedative. It lulls people into lazy agreement. And that laziness becomes contagious. Whole generations start to wear conviction without ever confronting evidence.

This is not just theoretical. It has real-world consequences. The collective belief that economic growth justifies environmental destruction has brought our planet to the brink. The widespread notion that endless consumption equals happiness has created epidemics of debt and depression. The popular stance that self-esteem should never be challenged has birthed fragile minds incapable of handling correction. In each case, the masses did not ask the right questions. They did not check the logic. They simply followed the music of public approval until it led them off a cliff.

History offers warnings that could have saved us if we had cared to learn. The witch trials of Salem were popular. Eugenics was once mainstream science. Segregation was defended by millions. Apartheid was upheld by religious arguments. Each one had public support. Each one was wrong. Terribly, irreparably wrong. But the mob cheered. The slogans spread. And the dissidents were punished. That is the price of leaving ideas untested. They rot. And they take everything down with them.

Today’s versions are less bloody but equally dangerous. The rise of anti-intellectualism, the glorification of hustle culture, the blind worship of wealth, and the infantilization of discourse are not just annoying trends. They are signs of a culture unwell. A culture that prizes sensation over substance. Performance over principles. Convenience over confrontation. It is easier to repeat what is popular than to research what is right. It is easier to agree than to argue. But what is easy is often what is fatal.

We have reached a point where popularity has become a synonym for morality. If enough people cheer, then it must be good. If it looks progressive, then it must be right. If it makes you feel empowered, then it must be true. This is not enlightenment. This is delusion dressed in digital glitter. Morality is not a mood. It is not a poll. It does not answer to hashtags. It answers to principles that stand whether five people believe them or five billion. It does not need applause to be valid. It only needs courage to be upheld.

The modern intellectual battlefield is not filled with scholars. It is filled with performers. People now curate their beliefs like they curate their social feeds. They edit, filter, and delete anything that does not match their aesthetic. The result is not education. It is theatre. The comments are full of affirmation. The ideas are full of air. And nobody dares to call it out because being offensive is now a greater crime than being wrong.

But let it be said, clearly and without hesitation. A society that prioritizes comfort over truth is a society that will decay in the most civilized way possible. It will smile as it crumbles. It will throw parades while its institutions rot. It will fund festivals while its children forget how to reason. And when the collapse comes, it will look surprised. It will wonder how things fell apart so quickly. But the truth is things fell apart the moment people stopped interrogating what they believed. Collapse always begins at the level of ideas.

To avoid that fate, we must do the hard thing. We must stop letting popularity write our principles. We must refuse to be intimidated by consensus. We must challenge even the ideas that feel good. Especially those. Because feel-good falsehoods are the most dangerous kind. They seduce without scrutiny. They spread without resistance. And before long, they become untouchable.

True intellectual maturity means sitting with discomfort. It means being willing to be the only person in the room who disagrees. It means valuing truth over validation. That is not easy. But it is necessary. Because the cost of comfort is clarity. And once clarity is gone, truth becomes impossible to find.

Let this be a wake-up call to every thinker, writer, leader, and human being who has settled for echo instead of evidence. Let it be a call to arms for those still willing to think out loud, even when the room goes quiet. Let it be a reminder that the truth does not owe you convenience. It owes you confrontation. That is the price of insight.

So interrogate what is popular. Dissect what is viral. Examine what is applauded. And remember this. Just because an idea has many followers does not mean it is worth following. Some of the most tragic chapters in history were co-written by applause.

Works Cited

Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Penguin Classics, 2006. Originally published in 1963.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/576366/eichmann-in-jerusalem-by-hannah-arendt/

Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021.

https://www.hmhbooks.com/shop/books/Nineteen-Eighty-Four/9781328869333

Sunstein, Cass R. Echo Chambers: Bush v. Gore, Impeachment, and Beyond. Princeton University Press, 2001.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400824283

Cialdini, Robert B. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Harper Business, Revised Edition, 2021.

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/influence-robert-b-cialdini

Pennycook, Gordon and David Rand. “The Implied Truth Effect: Attaching Warnings to a Subset of Fake News Stories Increases Perceived Accuracy of Stories Without Warnings.” Management Science, vol. 66, no. 11, 2020, pp. 4944–4957.

https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2019.3478

Haslam, S. Alexander, and Stephen D. Reicher. “Contesting the ‘Nature’ of Conformity: What Milgram and Zimbardo’s Studies Really Show.” PLoS Biology, vol. 10, no. 11, 2012.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001426

McRaney, David. How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion. Portfolio, 2022.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/673451/how-minds-change-by-david-mcraney/