人为什么容易上当？.docVIP

人为什么容易上当？ 　　我们好骗，是因为我们太懒。这话可能过于简单化，也过于讽刺。但看看近来流行的“朋友圈”谣言，很多都有悖常识，经不起推敲，但为什么就能横行无忌，还大有野火之势呢？因为我们懒得去辨别来自熟人的信息，即使被辟谣后，还是懒得去改变想法。谣言或许危言耸听，无伤大雅，但却有如流毒，扭曲事实，蛊惑人心，祸患无穷，不得不防。 　　If you ever need proof of human gullibility， cast your mind back to the attack of the flesh-eating bananas.2 In January 2000， a series of chain emails began reporting that imported bananas were infecting people with “necrotizing fasciitis”―a rare disease in which the skin erupts into livid purple boils before disintegrating and peeling away from muscle and bone.3 　　According to the email chain， the FDA was trying to cover up the epidemic to avoid panic.4 Faced with the threat， readers were encouraged to spread the word to their friends and family. 　　The threat was pure nonsense5， of course. But by 28 January， the concern was great enough for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to issue a statement decrying the rumour.6 　　Did it help？ Did it heck.7 Rather than quelling the rumour， they had only poured fuel on its flames.8 Within weeks， the CDC was hearing from so many distressed9 callers it had to set up a banana hotline. The facts became so distorted10 that people eventually started to quote the CDC as the source of the rumour. Even today， new variants of the myth have occasionally reignited those old fears.11 The banana apocalypse may seem comical in hindsight， but the same cracks in our rational thinking can have serious，12 even dangerous， consequences. 　　Why do so many false beliefs persist in the face of hard evidence？ And why do attempts to deny them only add grist to the rumour mill13？ It’s not a question of intelligence―even Nobel Prize winners have fallen for some bizarre and baseless theories.14 But a series of recent psychological advances may offer some answers， showing how easy it is to construct a rumour that bypasses the brain’s deception filters.15 　　One， somewhat humbling， explanation is that we are all “cognitive misers”―to save time and energy， our brains us