Dr. Justin Coulson

There's always been a tendency to do that.

So the original research into this kind of thing was looking at soccer hooligans in the UK.

Like the craziness that happens after a soccer game for the losing side or even the winning side and that mob mentality where you just get swept up into it.

So like in a telephone line in the olden days, they used to have this thing that they called a repeater.

So you'd say something and then this repeater would pick up the signal of what you said and send it further down the line to the next repeater and the next repeater and the next repeater so that I would get it at the other end of the line.

Humans are basically repeaters.

We don't have a lot of our own thoughts.

What happens is we hear something and we're like, yeah, that seems about right for me.

And then we repeat it to other people.

So

Let me pick another.

I'm just going to pick the hottest of hot button topics, right?

Let's talk about Palestine and Israel, or let's talk about global warming or any of those topics.

The vast majority of us wouldn't even be able to find Palestine on a map.

or Israel or Ukraine for that matter.

We've never been there.

The only things we know about are the things that we've heard other people tell us.

And depending on who we like or who's most persuasive, we start to say, well, that's what I believe because I like that person or I generally align with their opinion, so I'm going to believe them.

But we don't have any firsthand knowledge.

We're just picking it up.