Losing Faith in People? A Pig and a Potato Chip Explain Why

The other morning, I read about a pregnant pig I'll call Sally. The New York Times column explained that Sally had been put in a pen so small she couldn't do anything but stand and wait (no turning around, no taking a step). And now Congress was considering a new law that would not only keep this practice legal, but also override protections Massachusetts and California had put in place for pregnant pigs like Sally. (Kristof, 2026) For a brief moment, it happened to me again: that sense that we as a people have lost our way.

Every day, stories like these find us. It's a grave-faced reporter speaking in solemn tones, or a heartbreaking headline screaming across the top of The New York Times, or a Facebook post shoving catastrophe into our feed. They're insisting: Somewhere out there (or maybe right in your own backyard) people are acting badly. And, watch out, they're coming for you (or what you believe in)!

We're shown a steady stream of people engaging in conflict, hate, and crime, and it fills us with fear, even rage, toward others. It erodes our trust and belief in one another… and we pull back, spending more and more of our lives alone. Today, more than one in five of us feels lonely all the time (or nearly all the time). (Office of the Surgeon General, 2023)

Why are we being fed this constant diet of miserable stories about people? And once we understand why, the question that matters most is: what do we do now?

The Bait

To answer why?, we turn somewhere unexpected, to the humble potato chip. (Hint: It's not nearly as humble as it seems.) When a company makes a potato chip, it engineers the chip itself, balancing salt and fat and crunch and a hundred other factors to make sure that, once we start, our body's voice, the one that signals, You're full!, the one that says, Enough!, gets drowned out. The company even proudly advertises this: Bet you can't eat just one! Once you pop, you can't stop! (They're not slogans; they're confessions.) Then the company hires a team of marketers to convince us to take our first bite, knowing it won't be our last. (Gearhardt et al, 2026)

The media, news and socials alike, have developed their own version of this playbook. To see how, we'll go back a million years or so to a rustle in the grass.

For two million years, we humans lived another way, in villages, finding joy in belonging and welcome in shared life. Our security came from mutuality, the promise that I will take care of you, and you will take care of me, because we belong to each other. In this world, we worked collectively, completing the tasks of the day in four hours. Life's threats were occasional, a rustle in the grass, a storm on the horizon. We would startle, attend to it together, then turn back to the shared fire, relaxing among the faces around us, melting into the long ordinary hours of a connected life. It was days of mostly each other, occasionally danger. That's the rhythm we're built for. (Henrich & Muthukrishna, 2021)

Over two million years in this setting, our brains evolved. They told us: Relax in the safety of one another. And, when you see a possible threat, the occasional movement in the tall grass, pay attention!

Now, over the past few hundred years, the villages quickly (and violently) disappeared, giving way to a global consumer culture. But we still arrive into this world with brains that don't know the villages are gone: they anticipate the welcome and belonging of fellow villagers, and they're wired to react quickly to snakes in the grass.

That's the opening the media, news and social alike, exploit. Their headlines are built to grab us right where the snakes once did: be afraid, someone is doing something dangerous, and you need to know. The studies all say the same thing: the more frightened (or upset) the headline makes us feel about others, the more we click and the faster we pass it on… so headlines are written carefully, not to inform, but to trip our brain's ancestral alarm. (Robertson et al, 2023)

Then, much like our potato chip manufacturers, media sets us up to keep consuming. The feed never ends, and media makes sure we know, somewhere in here lies another dangerous snake. So we keep going, even when we don't enjoy it anymore: I've stopped liking this but I'm still doing it. The first bite was the headline; now, we just keep consuming.

And what happens next?

The Trap

As media makes sure it shows us the worst of us, cruelty held up as commonplace, everyday kindness filtered out, we sense we might be in real trouble because all these people are behaving badly. Then comes the clincher: media keeps our brain's threat-alarm system firing so frequently that our brain takes this shortcut: these people feel dangerous; best not to fact check; just assume it's true. (Baum et al, 2024) We become convinced we're surrounded by (mostly) terrible people.

We do the sensible thing, limiting how much we reach out. We finish the leaving that's been happening for a long time: villages emptied over centuries as empires snuffed out the fires and the faces, eventually replacing them with a consumer culture demanding that we make it on our own; now, media finishes the job, convincing us the people we've drifted from are too dangerous to return to.

It's a loop. Media trips our fear; fear darkens our view of each other; our darkened view sends us inward; alone, we reach for media again, looking for company in the very place that takes it from us.

The Truth

It doesn't take much to change all this, because that wiring for connection is alive inside all of us. It's as simple as taking a step back from media and spending a little time with neighbors, friends, and family. That's when the truth shines through: People are mostly good, not mostly awful, helping more than they hurt, caring more than they cheat.

When we look up from our screen, we remember the people around us, our fellow villagers, were never the danger. The danger was always the media telling us to be afraid of them.

And this brings me back to Sally and the cruelty of her tiny crate. After the headline, further down in the column, there's this: animal-welfare advocates on the left and outspoken conservatives on the right are finding common ground in defense of Sally, and collectively 84% of Americans want to see her living in open pens and pasture. Yes, cruelty is real, but so is all this. The crate made the headline and made me click, but further into this story are the hundreds of millions of good people who want better. I found them when I took the time to look. That's my ask of you: look, because the headline isn't anywhere near the whole truth.