Abstract

Sign up is via Google Form: https://forms.gle/Vi1dPszdBnnzFYpL9

*

How do we decide who we can trust and what we should believe?

This week, Prof Hugo Mercier will be discussing his latest book ‘Not Born Yesterday – Why we are less gullible than we think”.

In the second talk of the series, Hugo will argue that human beings are generally resistant to attempts at mass persuasion, whether by politicians, religious leaders, or advertisers. Drawing on recent findings from political science and other fields ranging from history to anthropology, Mercier will attempt to demonstrate that the narrative of widespread gullibility, in which a credulous public is easily misled by demagogues and charlatans, is simply wrong.

Professor Hugo Mercier is a research scientist at the CNRS (Institut Jean Nicod, Paris), where he works with the Evolution and Social Cognition team and the Collective Intelligence team.