Just the other day, over a plate of sub-par Asian food, a good friend of mine started to recount his experience as a student. He and I have both been communications students for a while now, and somehow we wandered into a conversation about the alarmingly significant ways the very theories we study apply to our world.

However, we weren’t talking about how these theories help us understand interpersonal interactions or the ways what we learn might help us better convey a message. Instead, we were talking about how communication research exposes the extent to which our view of the world can be intentionally manipulated.

Whether it be by news media, politicians, television, businessmen, movies, or educators — there is no difference. We are subject to the messages of those around us and, at all times, we are at risk of absorbing the ideological projections of those around us. So, what happens when a select group of newscasters, politicians, directors and professors conspire to present an alternate reality which lends itself to a narrative which might be more in line with their own agendas?

In order to control the way Americans operate, we are being presented with intentionally manipulated narratives by those who produce and deliver media and information.

In many ways, we are living in a highly propagandized society. We tend to think of propaganda as an explicitly pro-government form of intellectual force-feeding. However, Oxford Dictionaries define it as “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.” Simply put, it is the controlled presentation of ideas in order to produce a specific result.

With that said, there are two different communication theories which have helped me reach the conclusion I present you with now.

The first is Richard Petty and John Cacioppo’s Elaboration Likelihood Model. This theory explains the way we process a message, argument or even just new information. It suggests that people are either motivated to intentionally process something or we simply allow our instinct to sort it out for us. Accordingly, there are two routes through which we might process information: the central route and the peripheral route.

The central route tends to be the more convicting and judicious way to process information of greater sensitivity and/or importance. Things like what to buy, where to vacation or when to propose are almost always processed through the central route. This route requires high levels of motivation to process and time to focus on that effort of processing. It also tends to be safer from external manipulation.

The peripheral route, on the other hand, handles the role of processing in a much more automatic way. Because we cannot process every decision or piece of data thoroughly without going completely mad, the peripheral route helps us quickly make simpler decisions. For example, it might help us decide how many napkins to get out of the napkin dispenser, whether or not to change the TV channel or if we want to read that new book.

But here’s the thing about the peripheral route that makes it easy to weaponize: the seemingly instinctual decisions characteristic of this route are influenced by trivial things like how credible we believe the deliverer of the information to be and how we feel when presented with that information.

Now, this plays into my aforementioned argument by outlining the way that our minds can be manipulated by those who are seeking to advance a particular agenda or to produce a specific result. The friend I was eating teriyaki chicken with elaborated on this by explaining why we often see popular, well-loved actors and actresses at political gatherings.

For example, who cares if Hillary Clinton is endorsed by half of Congress? Not too many of us. If she’s endorsed by Katy Perry, however, that’s a whole different story.

We are more likely to receive and trust Katy Perry’s political message — even though she hasn’t explicitly served the U.S. government a day in her life — than we are a trained politician because we are endeared towards Perry. We trust her. And so we trust what she says.

Let me move on to the other theory I promised to talk about, though. The Cognitive Dissonance Theory provides another interesting piece of insight into how we are being quietly controlled by the media we consume.

Created by Leon Festinger, this theory explains the way we alter our behavior or ideas to decrease the feeling of dissonance, or discomfort produced by contradiction. This means that we tend to seek out information or ideas which directly compliment the ones we already possess so that we do not have to sort out the uneasy feeling which could be produced otherwise.

Playing into this theory is the Selective Exposure Hypothesis. This hypothesis explains why your grandmother might only watch Fox News. At 80 years old, the last thing she wants to do is have to reconcile the fact that there might be some validity in what MSNBC is arguing.

News stations, TV shows, politicians and so on know that we like to hear what we already like. We want someone to carefully and quietly help us reach a conclusion and then we want them to confirm our unfailing wisdom in deciding what we’ve decided. Even more, we do not want to consume media that differs from our believes.

And so we don’t.

Therefore, Congress is able to beat the “Russia is evil” horse long past its expiration date, because it’s a narrative we bought into and one we want confirmed.

They know we won’t notice because we’re too busy drinking their perfectly positioned Kool-Aid.

I think we are being far too cavalier about our consumption of media. We are letting everyone else think for us and by the time we figure out all the ways we are being mentally taken advantage of, the damage is already done.

So, I encourage anyone and everyone to take a moment to disconnect from the buckets of strategically developed and delivered information around them and evaluate their own beliefs, values, interests and questions. Take some time to dust off that trust central processing route and allow yourself the freedom to think freely.