Programmed to believe: Why people buy into falsehoods

If you’ve ever held a political conviction, you’ve probably found yourself asking, “How on Earth can those people be so gullible?”

Not your people, of course, the reasonable and well-informed ones who share your politics. No, we mean the millions on the other side, the ones who have chosen to stick their tinfoil-covered heads in the sand to swallow the tripe-flavored Kool-Aid. Those people. 

Except it turns out that, under the right conditions, any of us can be played. Behavioral scientists say that many of our beliefs about the world, true as they may be, are more