Folks Reveal Inaccurate 'Facts' They've Been Told, And The Examples Are Hilarious (37 Answers)

People often tend to believe things more if a lot of other folks trust the same idea. Studies have found that sometimes false beliefs are adopted just because of their popularity. 

Pseudoscientific thoughts and misinformation are now so common because of the way they’re presented on social media. Apparently, fake news travels six times faster than fact-based information, especially on such platforms.

This might be because people care about the opinions of others and want to feel like they are part of the group. Unfortunately, this can be dangerous, especially if the fake facts are related to health, wellness, mental well-being, or science. 

The problem with fake facts is that even though everyone thinks they’re blatantly obvious, they’re actually pretty hard to spot, which is exactly why so many people fall for misinformation.

To understand why this happens, Bored Panda contacted Professor Georg Weizsäcker. He is a German economist whose research areas of interest include microeconomics, experimental economics, financial decision-making, and game and decision theory. He also wrote a book called ‘Misunderstandings: False Beliefs in Communication.’

Prof. Georg told us that “people are not only bad at lying detection, but they also believe that they are good at [it]. One often hears people boasting about their ability to understand other people. When it comes to the possibility that the other person may lie, a standard quote is, ‘I look them in the eye.’” 

“Thereby, people express that they are somehow able to understand how the other person’s facial expression contains a clue to realizing what they intend to do or what they feel. This frequent boasting is at odds with a whole literature in social psychology, which says that most people are very bad at lie detection. Even specialists like judges are not very good at it,” he added.

Even though most of the examples on this list involve people who didn’t realize they were peddling misinformation, not everyone is so innocent. Some people purposely invent false ideas and try to pass them off as the truth.

Professor Georg told us that “the sad truth is that we are gullible and it is easy to mislead us. Even worse: we think that we cannot be misled. This makes other people's efforts to mislead us even more successful.”

“One explanation that we offer is that people are quite bad at understanding the expectation that the other person has about our reaction to their [words]. If the other person expects that I believe her, then she may have an especially large incentive to lie to me (depending on her will to do so): she believes that deception would work if she attempted it.” 

“Therefore, when examining the truthfulness of the other person's [words], I should first ask myself, does she believe that I believe her? Our data suggest that this is not what people actually do,” he added.

With so much misinformation being spread around, it might seem tough to actually find the truth among the lies. According to experts, there are a few easy ways to sift through false facts. You can do this by:

1. Verifying online information by first doing a reverse text or image search.
2. Use the Debunking Handbook as a guide to understanding and learning about psychological biases and how they play a role in the way we think and act.
3. Practicing empathy for those who spread false facts and finding a way to answer any concerns they might have.

We also reached out to Jamie, who manages a channel about sentientism. He told us that “straight fact-checking can work well if the person we’re talking to is genuinely open-minded, but it’s often not enough if someone has become deeply invested in a false belief. There, it’s often best to try to keep a good, trusting relationship with the person and find ways to explore why they believe what they believe.” 

“Over time, helping them to work their own way out of a false belief is often more productive than trying to push them with facts and logic. It’s also important to check ourselves, not just check others. We all like to criticize the false beliefs of others, but everyone has some poorly founded beliefs.” 

“Often, our claimed commitment to ‘evidence and reason’ evaporates when we’re challenged on something we want to keep believing. Only when we’re willing to challenge our own most desperately cherished, self-serving beliefs can we really claim to be truly interested in understanding reality as it is,” Jamie added.

It’s hard to know where such inaccurate beliefs come from and why they are spread so easily, but it is important to be aware of them. Jamie told us that “we don’t teach good epistemology (how to work out what’s true or real) in schools, so people often default to beliefs they find comforting, that line up with things they were taught as kids, or that line up with the people around them.”

He also said that “false beliefs can start from honest misunderstandings or mistakes, deliberate lies or people confusing fiction with real life. Once someone has accepted a belief, particularly if they feel that belief is important to their identity, it becomes hard to change. People’s convictions can strengthen because they start to filter out evidence and opinions that they oppose.”

Although it might seem like an uphill battle to question a person who truly believes in a fake fact, maybe it can help them see a new side of things. Remember to always question everything you’re told and everything you’ve been telling people so far. Who knows, maybe you’ve been spreading some fake facts of your own.

If you think of any misinformation that you used to strongly believe in, we’d love to hear about it and also learn from your mistakes.