There is a war on for your mind. You may not notice, but you are surrounded by manipulators: advertisers, politicians, Big Tech – even the humble waiter who asks, “still or sparkling?” We are awash with attempts to change how we think and what we do. The human brain is bombarded by thousands of pieces of information every day, the equivalent of 174 newspapers every day.
Psychology used to be about diagnosing and fixing people, but now it is as much about predicting and manipulating you, thanks to adoption of behavioural science by governments and corporations. Human beings are subject to biases which are used against us, mercilessly, such as our conformity and authority biases.
The need to reclaim sovereignty of your mind has never been so timely, because the combination of sophisticated behavioural psychology with Big Tech and AI means we will be more vulnerable than at any other point in history.
Free minds have never been so under threat from the fact-checkers, the nudgers, shadowy Government units surveilling and censoring us, highly personalised online environments and the multiple distractions of a screen-based life.
The human mind is a wondrous thing which demands ingenuity and truth. We believe your mind should be free. Fortunately, there is a field manual for winning in this information a battlefield: here are six rules from our new book Free Your Mind to live by.
Hack your phone with boosts
Eighty-three percent of the world’s population owns a smart phone, and we pick them up between 49 and 80 times a day. Multiple studies prove they affect our cognitive abilities, while social media platforms are deliberately designed to be sticky and to manipulate our emotions, so we need to practise social media distancing.
We might bristle at the idea of being ‘nudged’ by outside forces. But what if we could ‘nudge’ ourselves? This is a fairly new idea that psychologists call ‘boosting’. There are several boosts that you can selectively apply to hack your phone – and your own mind – and make you more resilient to said outside forces. Some of these you might know, such as switching off notifications and setting screen time limits, or even taking a temporary digital detox. But there are more subtle and effective boosts. For example, setting your phone to grayscale rather than full colour has been shown to reduce screen time by about 30 minutes a day; and moving addictive apps away from the home screen reduced the number of phone pick-ups in a week by 6%.
Get it in writing
British teenagers’ top three news sources are Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, according to an Ofcom report. The world is becoming more and more visual – and that’s before we’ve even started to immerse ourselves in the Metaverse and Apple’s Vision Pro headsets. The trouble is, we’re far more likely to be manipulated by images than we are by words. Human beings have had writing for 4,000 years, but we’ve had eyes for 543 million years. What we see is more emotional and automatic than what we read. Psychologists call it the picture superiority effect: images are more attention-grabbing, memorable and persuasive. For example, newspaper stories with images are more likely to influence you, and video reports even more so. On the other hand, reading flexes the brain’s muscles and gives it time to breathe. Whenever there’s a chance of persuasion – in the news, at the supermarket, or at work – try to get the information in writing before making a big decision.
Move from a hot to a cold state
Modern life is a chaotic whirligig of confusion. We are endlessly assaulted by the equivalent of 174 newspapers of information everyday – or at least we were all the way back in 2007, when the study was conducted. Goodness only knows how much we are bombarded with now, now Tweets compete with Fleet street. Unfortunately, you are more vulnerable to persuasion when you are going through a kind of ‘blip’ of uncertainty and confusion. On a small scale, it could be that you buy those trinkets and sweets when you get to the checkout in Primark, stressed and exhausted. On a larger scale, it could be that you join a multi-level marketing scheme when you’ve been through a divorce and moved across the country. And on the largest scale, a country could be more pliable when it’s going through Brexit, a pandemic or a recession. When making important decisions, it’s crucial to step out of a ‘hot’ – emotional or overwhelmed – state and into a cold one. Take some time to make the decision in private.
Meditate
When you are manipulated, half of the problem is the messaging itself, but half of the problem is you. Sometimes natural human foibles are being weaponised against you, and sometimes it’s your own unique emotional landmines. It’s the work of a lifetime to understand ourselves and stop self-haunting – meditation offers an important solution.
Sometimes we tend to think so hard, we lose our gut instinct and fall prey to our biases. You can debias the mind during any form of mindful meditation, by improving ‘interoceptive awareness’. Just one 15-minute mindfulness session can reduce the incidence of a particular cognitive bias by 34%. Counter-intuitively, to free your mind, don’t overthink it.
Analytic meditation is a more advanced form of meditation practised by Buddhists, including the Dalai Lama. It teaches you to research and know your mind. Pondering the thoughts that influence your behaviour and attitudes, which can bring about inner change, a more positive state of mind and psychological awareness.
Consume media that make you happy
While the goal is to free your mind, the universe is infinitely big, and our brains are minuscule by comparison, so we can each only see a tiny slice of reality. Much of what we sense as reality is actually an illusion. However, we can use that fact to our advantage, and each choose the perceived world we want to live in.
Forty-six percent of people actively avoid news every day because it makes them miserable and trust in media is low. Thrashing out debates online doesn’t seem to be bringing forth happiness or peace. On the other hand, studies show that reading poetry improves well-being and positive affirmations are self-fulfilling prophecies.
If, to an extent, we must live in an illusion, we have the power to choose one we like. Instead of doom-scrolling on social media you can focus on films, books, theatre, podcasts and artworks that elevate your mind and mood.
Develop of a set of principles and plan in advance
Today, people searching for meaning shift seamlessly from one ‘current thing’ to another. You can see it play out on social media accounts, when emojis get swapped out for one temporary crusade after another. Crucially, nature abhors a vacuum and we are more susceptible to cults and mass movements if we don’t know what we stand for. If people are empty inside, if they do not have some kind of guiding principles, then they risk being filled up by another ideology. As G. K. Chesterton said, “Those who leave the tradition of truth do not escape into something which we call Freedom. They only escape into something else, which we call Fashion.” We must all decide what we stand for if we don’t want to fall for anything .
Finding an authentic purpose in life is one of the most important guardrails against undue influence. This is intrinsic to the world’s religions. For the agnostic or atheist, you can find also purpose by self-individuating (as Jung called it) through meaningful work, family and community.
Develop a plan (even a quick mental one) and set of principles for any situations where you are liable to be psychologically influenced, whether it’s shopping, dating or politics. And determine your principles and beliefs on your own through reflection and writing, before the next wave of emoji activism hits.
If you liked these six rules, we have 375 pages of ground-breaking, smart-thinking advice for you, in our new book Free Your Mind: The new world of manipulation and how to resist it, out today. We hope you like it! And, if you so, please leave a review on Amazon or the bookstore of your choice.
Laura Dodsworth is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller A State of Fear: how the U.K. Government weaponised fear during the COVID-19 pandemic. You can subscribe to her Substack page here.
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