Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.
Boston.com (via tedr)
Facts have been historically hard to verify. Perhaps this tendency is a defensive mechanism? It’s tempting to believe something just because someone tells you a “fact.” But how do you easily verify the “fact”? What if it’s not a fact at all? What if it’s a lie? How do you know? Selection for gullibility is unlikely.
This explanation seems more likely than the infinitely more insulting gnash about “backfire” as a defense against cognitive dissonance that’s offered in the article.
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