True Enough: Selective exposure/perception

What I found most influential to me after reading True Enough by Farhad Manjoo was the insights that Manjoo opened my eyes to. Although I favored reading the topics about controversial events like the attacks on September 11^th, I connected more strongly to the text with a focus that I could relate to my own everyday life.

The basis of this focus that Manjoo covered involved his theories on selective exposure and selective perception. Just to restate these definitions, Manjoo defines selective exposure as being “we simply steer clear of information that contradicts what we think we know” (30). Therefore, growing off this term he defines selective perception as, “that even when two people of opposing ideologies overcome their tendency toward selective exposure and choose to watch the same thing, they may still end up being pushed apart from each other.” (78). After having been exposed to these explanations of sociology, I’ve realized how frequently they apply to my outlooks and the perspectives of others. Similar to how Manjoo describes the way certain people that possess a strict political view only watch a certain television station, I have a strict preference to a certain sports pre-game show. Every Sunday morning-afternoon whether I’m trying to do homework or not, ESPN’s NFL countdown must be playing on the television. For one reason only, to watch reporter Chris Berman share his analysis on the upcoming games that afternoon. This is because like myself, Berman focuses more on analyzing the underdogs best chances for victory. Growing up in a family with no severe preference for any sports teams, I root for the underdog team to pull an upset in most games. The neutral, yet somewhat selective style of game viewing is what Berman offers that many other broadcasting stations like CBS and Fox don’t with most their reporters being former coaches or players.

I also felt that the Dartmouth versus Princeton football game example that Manjoo used to highlight selective perception demonstrated this concept well. Whenever there’s any form of competitiveness between two sides, there’s an initial opinion of each side whether it is good or bad. I feel Manjoo is trying to show is that people from opposing sides will always have different perspectives before and after the game, but more times than not, the before and after don’t change the perspective. In the case of the outcome of Dartmouth and Princeton game, the Dartmouth fans just thought Princeton was just as whiney as they’ve ever been. Likewise the Princeton fans felt the Dartmouth players were only on a mission to hurt others. Whether these accusations are true or not doesn’t matter, as long as the fans on each side felt that their pre-existing beliefs were supported.