How to Convince Someone When Facts Fail

[_Maksutov]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... A_FB_MB_EG

From the article:

.....

Have you ever noticed that when you present people with facts that are contrary to their deepest held beliefs they always change their minds? Me neither. In fact, people seem to double down on their beliefs in the teeth of overwhelming evidence against them. The reason is related to the worldview perceived to be under threat by the conflicting data.

Creationists, for example, dispute the evidence for evolution in fossils and DNA because they are concerned about secular forces encroaching on religious faith. Anti-vaxxers distrust big pharma and think that money corrupts medicine, which leads them to believe that vaccines cause autism despite the inconvenient truth that the one and only study claiming such a link was retracted and its lead author accused of fraud. The 9/11 truthers focus on minutiae like the melting point of steel in the World Trade Center buildings that caused their collapse because they think the government lies and conducts “false flag” operations to create a New World Order. Climate deniers study tree rings, ice cores and the ppm of greenhouse gases because they are passionate about freedom, especially that of markets and industries to operate unencumbered by restrictive government regulations. Obama birthers desperately dissected the president's long-form birth certificate in search of fraud because they believe that the nation's first African-American president is a socialist bent on destroying the country.

In these examples, proponents' deepest held worldviews were perceived to be threatened by skeptics, making facts the enemy to be slayed. This power of belief over evidence is the result of two factors: cognitive dissonance and the backfire effect. In the classic 1956 book When Prophecy Fails, psychologist Leon Festinger and his co-authors described what happened to a UFO cult when the mother ship failed to arrive at the appointed time. Instead of admitting error, “members of the group sought frantically to convince the world of their beliefs,” and they made “a series of desperate attempts to erase their rankling dissonance by making prediction after prediction in the hope that one would come true.” Festinger called this cognitive dissonance, or the uncomfortable tension that comes from holding two conflicting thoughts simultaneously.

Two social psychologists, Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson (a former student of Festinger), in their 2007 book Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) document thousands of experiments demonstrating how people spin-doctor facts to fit preconceived beliefs to reduce dissonance. Their metaphor of the “pyramid of choice” places two individuals side by side at the apex of the pyramid and shows how quickly they diverge and end up at the bottom opposite corners of the base as they each stake out a position to defend.

In a series of experiments by Dartmouth College professor Brendan Nyhan and University of Exeter professor Jason Reifler, the researchers identify a related factor they call the backfire effect “in which corrections actually increase misperceptions among the group in question.” Why? “Because it threatens their worldview or self-concept.” For example, subjects were given fake newspaper articles that confirmed widespread misconceptions, such as that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. When subjects were then given a corrective article that WMD were never found, liberals who opposed the war accepted the new article and rejected the old, whereas conservatives who supported the war did the opposite ... and more: they reported being even more convinced there were WMD after the correction, arguing that this only proved that Saddam Hussein hid or destroyed them. In fact, Nyhan and Reifler note, among many conservatives “the belief that Iraq possessed WMD immediately before the U.S. invasion persisted long after the Bush administration itself concluded otherwise.”

[_The CCC]

I think we have to be very careful in throwing around the charge of Cognitive Dissonance. IE: All know that atoms are mostly empty space, but we have no fear of falling through the floor when we get up in the morning.

[_Maksutov]

I think we have to be very careful in throwing around the charge of Cognitive Dissonance. IE: All know that atoms are mostly empty space, but we have no fear of falling through the floor when we get up in the morning.

Yeah, it becomes a rhetorical device. And the ongoing research into Cognitive Dissonance after Festinger has not always exactly confirmed his theory. There's still some controversy. There has also been controversy about the ethics of the way Festinger and colleagues infiltrated the cult and possibly influenced it. It's a fascinating chapter in the study of human behavior. Many of the paranormal players in the story influenced many of the fringe movements that are still active today, so it's also a historical resource in documenting those.

[_ClarkGoble]

I think the bigger question about cognitive dissonance is how it is deployed. People who don't understand a person's reasoning often are quick to apply the label of cognitive dissonance simply because they don't understand how someone could think that way.

Of course in practice most people simply don't reason out all their positions nor really question their positions with even a modicum of self-criticism. So it's hardly surprising that most people believe numerous contradictory things.

[_Physics Guy]

My theory is that human beings are actually pretty rational, but that reason just isn't as powerful as one might like to believe.

To me, the way that reason and evidence work together is Bayesian inference. According to Bayes's theorem, a strong prior can legitimately make one person harder to convince than another, but there should exist some amount of evidence at which anyone would be convinced.

The problem I see, though, is that all the evidence you will ever see in your life is only ever going to have some maximum weight. Even if there is enough evidence available in the world to overwhelm your strong priors and convince you, you can only ever personally experience a limited amount of that evidence. Past that point, you'll be dead.

So once a person's prior probabilities for alternative hypotheses are low enough, they simply won't live long enough to experience enough evidence to raise those probabilities above very low.

Reason and evidence are only reliable tools for convincing rational people given infinite time. Since we're all mortal, at some point we just have to accept that we disagree. That doesn't have to mean that any of us is stupid or unreasonable. We just start from different assumptions and live through limited and different experiences.

[_Themis]

In fact, Nyhan and Reifler note, among many conservatives “the belief that Iraq possessed WMD immediately before the U.S. invasion persisted long after the Bush administration itself concluded otherwise.”

Most conservatives now accept that there were no WMD just previous to the Iraq invasion. The question is why? Almost no one can have the evidence here in front of them. The evidence collected was done by only a few, and the rest of us have to decide who we believe. If trusted conservatives like the Bush administration had never admitted there was no WMD, I suspect most conservatives would still believe there were WMD in Iraq. I would suggest their admission is what got the ball rolling for more and more conservatives over time changing their view. I'm reminded of a black guy who befriended some KKK and eventually brought down the local chapter. He didn't do it by arguing with them, but by being a friend. We tend to believe or be more open minded with those we trust and are friends with.

Most people don't know the facts. They tend to make decisions on what to believe by what their tribe tells them. We are not much different then the 5 year old who believes absolutely what ever their parents tell them is the truth. This is why it is quite concerning that mainstream media and scientists are being labeled as the enemy and not to be trusted. The far right is the worst, but the far left does as well, even if to a lesser extent right now. Most are also not trained on how to seek truth/facts, so that they can be more independent thinkers.

[_bomgeography]

Same things applies to researchers who our trying to prove their theories and their data does not match up to the theory. IE world migration theories to North America.