We picture a change in beliefs in other people as a switch. Someone was fine, and then one day they were not, and somewhere in between there was a video with some misinformation. It is a comforting picture, because it implies a fix. Find the bad video, replace it with a better one and all is well.

The problem is that this view is wrong.

Nobody falls into misbelief. People slide, slowly, pulled by four psychological forces. Every one of those forces is part of the standard human equipment. You are running all four right now. So am I.

Why do I use the term funnel

A funnel is wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. Many people enter it, fewer continue down, and the further down you go the harder it becomes to climb back out. Not because the arguments get better. Because near the bottom, the walls are no longer made of arguments at all. They are made of relationships, identity, and the price of admitting that the last two years were a mistake.

The four forces

Emotional. This is the force at the top, and it starts with stress, particularly the unpredictable kind you cannot plan around. Stress makes us want a villain. Run that backwards and the appeal of a conspiracy becomes obvious. A story with a villain in it is a story where somebody is at the wheel. That is easier to live with than random harm that can attack again at any point.

Cognitive. This is what happens to the search once you are motivated to find something specific. You do not weigh evidence, you go looking for it, and the internet always has the answers you were looking for. And the cognitive elements do not end there. They include a few other components, including our tendency for little knowledge but overconfidence.

Personality. This is about who slides faster, and it is the uncomfortable section. Higher patternicity, which means seeing signal in noise, the sense of control, intellectual humility and narcissism, are all elements that fit the personality part of the funnel.

Social. This is what makes the whole thing permanent, and it is the force almost everyone underestimates. It is the main event. Once you are inside, leaving costs you every relationship you have left. Extremity stops being about the belief and starts being a way of belonging.

So I built a set of questions that walks you through it

You can use it to diagnose someone else, or yourself.

Each answer visibly moves one of four thermometers, with a short explanation of why it moved

https://decisionaids.danariely.com/funnel/

One more, for the force you most likely think does not apply to you

The cognitive force is the one nearly everybody exempts themselves from. Rather than argue with you about that, here is something additional that you can do to yourself in five minutes.

Rate how well you understand something you deeply believe in. Then explain how it actually works, step by step. Then rate yourself again. One belief, no score at the end. It asks what you can explain, not what you can defend, and the gap between the first rating and the second one is the entire point.

https://decisionaids.danariely.com/belief-audit/