Social Constructs

Recently I read two articles which came to rather odd conclusions.

The first one was about research showing that non-religious people were more easily stirred by emotional videos to donate resources, while religious people were less so. This was mutated into, "Religious people are less compassionate than non-religious people."

The second one was about research showing that people thinking in a second language, when presented with a safe option and a potentially (or expectationally) higher-yielding bet, chose the higher yielding bet. When in their first language, they preferred the safe option. This was mutated into, "Thinking in a second language makes you more rational."

There are obvious problems with these formulations. I leave them as an exercise for the thinking reader.