Gullibility

Gullibility is a failure of

The words gullible and credulous are commonly used as synonyms. Goepp & Kay (1984) state that while both words mean "unduly trusting or confiding", gullibility stresses being duped or made a fool of, suggesting a lack of intelligence, whereas credulity stresses uncritically forming beliefs, suggesting a lack of skepticism.^[4] Jewell (2006) states the difference is a matter of degree: the gullible are "the easiest to deceive", while the credulous are "a little too quick to believe something, but they usually aren't stupid enough to act on it."^[5]

The verb to gull and the noun cullibility (with a C) date back to Shakespeare and Swift, whereas gullibility is a relatively recent addition to the lexicon. It was considered a neologism as recently as the early 19th century.^[8][9] The first attestation of gullibility known to the Oxford English Dictionary appears in 1793, and gullible in 1825. The OED gives gullible as a back-formation from gullibility, which is itself an alteration of cullibility.^[10]

Early editions of

Greenspan (2009) presents dozens of examples of gullibility in literature and history:

• In the fairy tale The Adventures of Pinocchio, the title character is a gullible puppet who is repeatedly duped by other characters; part of his transformation into a human being is learning to avoid gullibility while still exercising empathy.
• In the first part of "Little Red Riding Hood", the title character is deceived by a wolf; from this experience she learns to feign gullibility in order to deceive a second wolf.
• In "The Emperor's New Clothes", the emperor and his staff display gullibility in being swindled, while the crowd displays credulity in believing in the invisible cloth.
• Mark Twain depicts mass gullibility in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, among others.
• Shakespeare explores gullibility in the title characters of Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and especially Othello.
• Of the examples of deception found in the Bible, the tale that most concerns the behavior of the deceived is Samson in the Book of Judges, a character who is destroyed by his gullibility in the face of love. The best-known example is Eve's gullibility in the Book of Genesis.^[14]

Deception is a classic theme in war and politics—see

Theories

Some writers on gullibility have focused on the relationship between the negative trait of gullibility and positive trait of

trust. They are related, as gullibility requires an act of trust. Greenspan (2009) writes that exploiters of the gullible "are people who understand the reluctance of others to appear untrusting and are willing to take advantage of that reluctance."^[7] In 1980, Julian Rotter wrote that the two are not equivalent: rather, gullibility is a foolish application of trust despite warning signs that another is untrustworthy.^[18]

Against gullibility

The relationship between gullibility and trust has led to alternate theories. Neuroscientist Hugo Mercier claims the opposite, that humans are intrinsically skeptical and difficult to persuade; we readily accept unsupported or false statements when they support our beliefs. One reason why we form these beliefs is that scientific theories are often counterintuitive, so we discard them in favour of explanations we find logical. This theory struggles to account for the prevalence of conspiracy theories; Mercier explains these as "reflective beliefs" that are insulated from our "intuitive beliefs", meaning that while we hold them we do not base our actions on them;^[19] an example of this is in the Pizzagate conspiracy where, despite many people falsely believing that a restaurant was harbouring child sex slaves, few took proportionate actions. As such, humans are not gullible per se, as we do not tend to trust everyone; indeed, a separate study found that more trusting participants were the best at discerning who to trust.^[20] As a result, he claims that humans "make more errors of omission (not trusting when we should) than of commission (trusting when we shouldn’t)".^[21] Research into how fake news influenced voting preferences in the 2018 Italian General Election supports this, suggesting that we tend to consume fake news that supports our ideologies and, thus, it does little to influence election outcomes.^[22]

See also

• Drinking the Kool-Aid
• Gaslighting
• Sheeple
• Suggestibility
• Swampland in Florida
• There's a sucker born every minute
• Vulnerabilities exploited by manipulators

Notes

1. ^ Greenspan 2009, pp. 2–3.
2. ^ ^{a b} Sofronoff, Dark & Stone 2011.
3. ^ Pinsker & McFarland 2010.
4. ^ Goepp & Kay 1984, p. 198.
5. ^ Jewell 2006, p. 360.
6. ^ Yamagishi, Kikuchi & Kosugi 1999, p. 145.
7. ^ ^{a b} Greenspan 2009, p. 3.
8. ^ ^{a b} Mencken & McDavid 1963, p. 24.
9. ^ Nuttall 1995, p. 265 "Gullible is not known to the Oxford English Dictionary before the 19th century..."; cited after Greenspan (2009, p. 23).
10. ^ ^{a b} Oxford English Dictionary online: gullibility, n. Oxford English Dictionary online: gullible, adj.
11. ^ Johnson 1797, p. 423; Johnson & Hamilton 1804, p. 106.
12. ^ Webster 1817, p. 148.
13. ^ Webster & Walker 1830, p. 392.
14. ^ Greenspan 2009, pp. 13–32.
15. ^ Greenspan 2009, pp. 51–59.
16. ^ Greenspan 2009, pp. 93–101.
17. ^ Greenspan 2009, pp. 133–144.
18. ^ Greenspan 2009, p. 3, who cites Rotter 1980.
19. ^ Fleming, Nic. "Why the human race may be less gullible than you think". New Scientist. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
20. ^ Yamagishi, Kikuchi & Kosugi 1999, pp. 145–161.
21. ^ "Who are you calling gullible?". UnHerd. 2020-03-24. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
22. ^ Cantarella, Michele; Fraccaroli, Nicolò; Volpe, Roberto (2019-07-11). "The effect of fake news on populist voting: Evidence from a natural experiment in Italy". VoxEU.org. Retrieved 2020-03-27.

References

• Goepp, Philip H.; Kay, Mairé Weir (June 1984), Gove, Philip B. (ed.), Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Synonyms: A Dictionary of Discriminated Synonyms with Antonyms and Analogous and Contrasted Words,
  ISBN 0-87779-341-7
• Greenspan, Stephen (2009), Annals of gullibility: why we get duped and how to avoid it,
  ISBN 978-0-313-36216-3
• Jewell, Elizabeth, ed. (2006), Pocket Oxford Dictionary & Thesaurus (2nd American ed.),
  ISBN 0-19-530715-1
• Johnson, Samuel (1797), A Dictionary of the English Language (11th ed.), Edinburgh: Brown, Ross, and Symington
• Boston, MA
  : W. P. and L. Blake
• Mencken, Henry Louis; McDavid, Raven Ioor (1963), The American language: an inquiry into the development of English in the United States, vol. 1, New York: Knopf
• JSTOR 3508189
• doi:10.1037/0003-066X.35.1.1
• Sofronoff, Kate; Dark, Elizabeth; Stone, Valerie (23 March 2011), "Social vulnerability and bullying in children with Asperger syndrome" (PDF), Autism, 15 (3): 355–372,
  S2CID 2051032, archived from the original
  (PDF) on 7 July 2011, retrieved 2 April 2011
• Webster, Noah (1817), A dictionary of the English language: compiled for the use of common schools in the United States, Hartford, Connecticut: George Goodwin & Sons
• Webster, Noah; Walker, John (1830), American dictionary of the English language: exhibiting the origin, orthography, pronunciation, and definitions of words (3rd ed.), New York: S. Converse
• Yamagishi, Toshio; Kikuchi, Masako; Kosugi, Motoko (April 1999), "Trust, gullibility, and social intelligence" (PDF), Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 2 (1): 145–161,
  doi:10.1111/1467-839X.00030, archived from the original
  (PDF) on 21 July 2011, retrieved 3 April 2011
• Pinsker, Donna M.; McFarland, Ken (June 2010), "Exploitation in Older Adults: Personal Competence Correlates of Social Vulnerability", Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 17 (6): 673–708,
  S2CID 25445154
  , retrieved 8 April 2021

Further reading

• Greenspan, Stephen; Loughlin, Gail; Black, Rhonda S. (2001), "Credulity and gullibility in people with developmental disorders: A framework for future research", International Review of Research in Mental Retardation, 24: 101–135,
  ISBN 9780123662248

Wikiquote has quotations related to Gullibility.