The Nidhi Razdan In Our Heads
Our reactions are more revealing than we think.
On the surface, this piece is about the anchor-editor Nidhi Razdan who announced on Friday that she was a victim of a sophisticated phishing attack. But really this is about how — for every piece of news — we choose narratives that reflect our beliefs and biases.
But first the facts.
On Friday, Razdan — one of India’s most famous journalists — tweeted that she had been misled into believing that she’d been appointed Associate Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University. She wrote, “I have been the victim of a very serious phishing attack. I’m putting this statement out to set the record straight about what I’ve been through.”
In June 2020, Razdan had announced that she was leaving NDTV 24/7 to take up the post. She was made to believe, she said on Friday, that she would join in September and then because of the pandemic, in January. But after noticing “a number of administrative anomalies in the process”, she reached out to the university and learnt that she had in fact not received an offer “to join their faculty.”
Razdan said she was fooled into believing she had received the offer by perpetrators who used “clever forgeries and misrepresentations.”
Frenzy in the first few hours
Razdan is one of the most prominent journalists in the public sphere and her announcement went off like a bomb. But once the shock wore off, it became apparent that her tweets led to further questions. Why did she not realise sooner that she had been had? Why did she use the ‘Associate Professor’ designation for several months on TV shows if she hadn’t yet started work at Harvard? And so on. (Razdan addressed these questions in a follow-up post 24 hours later.)
On Twitter, the reaction to her tweet was swift and brutal. There were those who expressed their shock and sympathy and those who expressed their glee at her misfortune.
Scrolling endlessly through Twitter in the hours immediately after the announcement, I saw how much our initial reactions are a reflection of our own political inclinations, tribal affiliations and values.
-Those who generally identify with the BJP government — the majority — were quick to criticise or poke fun at Razdan, tweeting and retweeting memes.
-Those who know her or know of her were generally sympathetic or supportive.
Even for those of us who came across as dispassionate and probing, there was a whiff of schadenfreude.
In hindsight, it is quite stunning how predictable our responses were. It shows that our instinct to interpret news through the lens of the ‘tribe’ that we belong to is really strong.
For many of you I’m stating the obvious. But I’m seeking inspiration in the following words, to be found in G.K. Chesterton’s novel The Napolean of Notting Hill.
There is a law written in the darkest of the Books of Life, and it is this: If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time.
Why does this matter to us?
For the most part, we don’t think of our tribal affiliations as influencing our response to news, because we have convinced ourselves that we are ‘rational’ creatures. But, as advances in behavioural sciences have shown, we are guided by emotions even when we think we are being rational.
In other words, we choose our responses to everything based on feelings. This happens — more often than not — at an unconscious level.
It usually takes several years for regular people like us to internalise new findings from science.
In the 1960s, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, two Israeli psychology professors began their work on how our ‘feelings’ (cognitive biases and heuristics) affect our decision-making and judgement. It took half a century for their ideas to proliferate. In 2002, Kahnenan received the Nobel Prize in economics for this work (which Tversky would have shared, had he been alive). Richard Thaler, an economist, applied their research and created the field of behavioural economics. The legal scholar Cass Sunstein applied these ideas to his field. And so on.
In this way, the Israeli psychologists’ work spread like wildfire, influencing every field.
But it was only in the late 2000s that their work spread to the mainstream. For example, it was only in 2011 that Kahneman published Thinking, Fast and Slow for the layperson. Today, it is common to see books on self-improvement that are based on behavioural science. But it might take a few more years still (or decades) before they become common knowledge.
What this likely means is that we will continue to view news, unfamiliar ideas and ideologies through our ‘tribal’ lenses.
No wonder then that:
- your average BJP supporter will continue to view anything Nidhi Razdan does or says with suspicion.
- ‘woke’ folks will continue to react with fury against anyone who questions her.
And many of us — me included — will continue to view current affairs and controversial events through our tribal lenses.
Still, it is helpful to be aware of how our minds are wired. Here are previous pieces on cognitive biases and confirmation bias.
P.S. For those wondering about Razdan’s follow-up, she wrote, “I wanted to write this piece to explain what happened to me and hope that it serves as a lesson to everyone else.” She also said:
She was given to believe she would teach for Harvard’s Extension School which offers a journalism degree.
She received several emails from official-looking IDs
She was given to believe she had received a work visa.
A friend pointed out that it’s more chilling if the prolonged attack on her wasn’t so much about money. Razdan represents a certain kind of journalist that is unafraid of posing tough questions. Was she targeted for her journalism?