The article overstates the research. It's not that the correction of misinformation positively *reinforced* the misinformation, it's just that the correction didn't correct nearly as much as the misinformation biased the person. The article even contradicts itself:

So, the misinformation biased the people by 24 percent, and the correction only corrected 8 percent. The correction didn't actually further bias the people.

The real conclusion here is something we already know: People tend to believe ideas that reinforce their stereotypes and filter out information that contradict their stereotypes.

Exactly!

And this is why simpletons and morons can be highly electable.

Both of the major political parties in America fully understand this now.

I would add to your, "seems nice"...   does the person look nice.

Humans are designed to trust one another.  That is, when someone is in our "in group," we tend to believe them without requiring definitive proof.  This is elementary, if you think about our evolutionary environment.  If somebody in the tribe says, "Tiger!!  Run!!" it's a good idea to just trust him and start running.  If he's lying, nobody loses, except for a little embarrassment and a few calories.  If he's right, instinctive trust turns out to be very valuable.

This can easily be seen at churches and political rallies.  Those people are all peers, and they have an innate tendency to trust one another.  Unfortunately, this can be viewed as a poor utilization of an advantageous adaptation.  It's great for avoiding tigers, but not so good for making well informed, reasoned decisions about long term policy.

Again, some simple extrapolation can tell us much.  Early humans, that is to say almost all of our evolutionary ancestors, lived in situations where there simply were no long term predictions to make.  Life was day to day, and survival minute to minute.  It makes perfect sense that our instincts lean heavily towards snap decisions instead of reasoned thought.

Another direction other than acting in our own benefit?  Bloody unlikely.  It's possible that we will fuck up the earth so badly that it becomes beneficial to us to steward our resources much more efficiently, but that will not be because our nature changed.  It will be because the environment changed.

Remember, humans don't instinctively plan beyond their own forseeable future.  It's kind of a foreign language for all of us.  (The future of our children is arguably within our own forseeable future, and fits the model of reciprocal altruism being a function of R, or degree of relation, but this is quibbling.)

Vastet, I feel as if you haven't read The Selfish Gene.  If you have, maybe reading The Origins of Virtue would help.  It's a good follow up book.  If you've read either or both of those books, I think you're missing something really important in them.  Humans are not here for humans.  We're here for our genes.  Genes do not think.  They just adapt to the current environment.  That's very important for you to understand.  No matter how much any organism evolves, it will still be a gene survival machine, and its nature will be to concern itself with its own current survival and reproduction.

This isn't to say that humans are completely incapable of getting together in large groups and doing things against their nature.  It's just bloody unlikely because each one of the people in a large group is an individual who is dominated by his own nature and concerned with his own survival.

Take my town as an example.  For years now, I and other outspoken members of the community have been encouraging people to leave their cars in the garage as often as possible, and walk, bike, or use public transport instead.  You can guess how much success I've had.  Curiously, now that there's been no gas in any of the gas stations for the last week and a half, I've noticed the number of cyclists increasing by the day, and the buses seem significantly more crowded than normal.  All of a sudden, people are taking the oil economy seriously.

Of course, it's not because we're "rising above our nature" or evolving into something better.  It's because it's disadvantageous to us at this time to rely on gas.  If somebody finds an oil reserve the size of Saudi Arabia underneath the cornfields in the Midwest, you can bet your bottom dollar that bikes will go out of style again.

Thanks for that, JillSwift.  Really well put.  While we're at it, it's really important to understand what nonzero sum reciprocal altruism is good for and what it's not.

As an illustration, I'm going to use birds -- I think I'm thinking of red grouse, but if I'm not, rest assured that there's a bird that fits my description.  I'm just conserving energy by not looking it up at this time.

Among these birds, there's only one way for a male to mate, and that is to build a nest.  Unfortunately, there are not enough nesting areas to support the average male population.  Some males go nest-less, and therefore do not get to mate.  If we assume that survival of the genes is the ultimate goal of genes (it is), then we might predict that the homeless birds would mercilessly attack birds with nests, hoping to defeat them in battle, kill them, or otherwise extract them from their nests, thus ensuring them a chance to mate.

Curiously, this is not what happens.  The homeless birds hover at the edge of the territory, apparently resigned to their fate.  The nested males are left unmolested.  Proponents of group selection have suggested that this is an example of individuals sacrificing themselves for the good of the group, but it is most certainly not.  It is actually selfish behavior.

Each bird that got a nest acquired it through force.  That is, he beat another male at combat or intimidated him into backing off.  In many cases, he did this repeatedly.  The bottom line is, he's a bad motherfucker.  Having lost one battle already, it stands to reason that the loser, should he attack again, will lose again.  This will mean that he has reduced his capacity to fight again later.  The more times he repeats this, the less capable he will be of defending his own nest should he acquire one.  If he dies in the attempt, his chances of mating drop to zero.

The nested males are not guaranteed reproductive success, though.  There are these things called foxes that love to eat birds sitting on nests.  When a fox comes out of the woods, what makes more sense?  For him to pursue the homeless bird that can take to the air and forget all about where he was, or to pursue the bird that will stay and doggedly defend its nest?  Obviously, the nested males are more vulnerable.  So, the outsiders are not resigned to their fate, nor are they sacrificing for the group.  They're conserving their energy so that when a fox comes along and eats a nested male, they will have as much strength as possible to fight the other homeless birds off and win the nest.

From this example, we can see that seemingly altruistic behaviors are not really "for the good of the group."  While they may have the added benefit of being good for the group, the bottom line is that they are good for the individual.  It works the same way in human societies.  We don't pay taxes because it's good for the group.  We pay taxes because it's good for us, on many levels.  There isn't a human alive that can manufacture a computer completely from raw materials to finished product.  We need other humans to have higher living standards.  This is the nature of nonzero-sum reciprocal altruism.  When it is generally to the advantage of an individual to defer to others, or to sacrifice part of his resources, he will.

This is why the poor are not constantly revolting all over the world.  They're not sacrificing for the group.  They're doing the best they can with what they have in the hopes of being able to get something better in the future.

What does this mean for the environment?  It means that until and unless it becomes more of a burden to exploit the environment than protect it, we will not, as a group, protect it in any meaningful way.  Same for any current political question.  Things happen when the perception is that it is to our individual benefit to do so.  If you don't believe this, think about something really altruistic in government, like socialized medicine.  This may seem like the ultimate in self sacrifice, but it's obviously not.  If medical care is free to everybody, and I have to pay for it out of my check every week, I know that no matter what happens, even if I don't have a job, or any money, I will get the benefit of socialized medicine in the future.  Furthermore, it's obvious that societies with extreme poverty are not good to live in, even for the well to do.  There are huge swaths of territory where it's generally undesirable and unsafe to go, and uprisings are much more common when there is a huge disparity in wealth.  If healthcare is an expense that threatens to drive millions of people into poverty, then it makes sense even for wealthy individuals to give up some of their resources to keep the poor happy enough that they won't ruin society for the wealthy.

Obviously, I'm not saying you can predict an election based on game theory.  People do things that don't make sense, and we vote for things that are not good for us individually in the broad scheme of things.  That's just what we're talking about, though.  People may get it wrong, but their motivation is always self interest.  This is where ideology finds victims.  It tells people that such and such will be good for them, and then counts on their selfish motivations to fuel the ideology.

How is acting in such a way in our own benefit today?

Sorry, I assumed the train of thought had continued. How is trusting everyone(or most people) in our own benefit today? The way I see it, it is NOT a survival benefit to trust everyone. It has not been for a number of years. The reverse is actually true today. Increasingly, the trusting are victimized and less able to survive and spread their genes. Therefore current pressures suggest a less trusting society in the future, more capable of throwing out ridiculous suggestions like a god, as per natural selection and evolutionary processes.

That is way too much for me to be able to get into under the time constraints I am under. I don't want to appear intellectually lazy or deceptive by only touching on one or two points, so I'm simply going to say we must agree to disagree.

Whatever man. You're approaching from a perspective that is irrelevant. So you can think whatever you like about what I have in fact and what I don't. You are wrong.