The Backfire Effect
The Misconception: When your beliefs are challenged with facts, you alter your opinions and incorporate the new information into your thinking.
The Truth: When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger.
Wired, The New York Times, Backyard Poultry Magazine – they all do it. Sometimes, they screw up and get the facts wrong. In ink or in electrons, a reputable news source takes the time to say “my bad.”
If you are in the news business and want to maintain your reputation for accuracy, you publish corrections. For most topics this works just fine, but what most news organizations don’t realize is a correction can further push readers away from the facts if the issue at hand is close to the heart. In fact, those pithy blurbs hidden on a deep page in every newspaper point to one of the most powerful forces shaping the way you think, feel and decide – a behavior keeping you from accepting the truth.
In 2006, Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler at The University of Michigan and Georgia State University created fake newspaper articles about polarizing political issues. The articles were written in a way which would confirm a widespread misconception about certain ideas in American politics. As soon as a person read a fake article, researchers then handed over a true article which corrected the first. For instance, one article suggested the United States found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The next said the U.S. never found them, which was the truth. Those opposed to the war or who had strong liberal leanings tended to disagree with the original article and accept the second. Those who supported the war and leaned more toward the conservative camp tended to agree with the first article and strongly disagree with the second. These reactions shouldn’t surprise you. What should give you pause though is how conservatives felt about the correction. After reading that there were no WMDs, they reported being even more certain than before there actually were WMDs and their original beliefs were correct.
They repeated the experiment with other wedge issues like stem cell research and tax reform, and once again, they found corrections tended to increase the strength of the participants’ misconceptions if those corrections contradicted their ideologies. People on opposing sides of the political spectrum read the same articles and then the same corrections, and when new evidence was interpreted as threatening to their beliefs, they doubled down. The corrections backfired.
Once something is added to your collection of beliefs, you protect it from harm. You do it instinctively and unconsciously when confronted with attitude-inconsistent information. Just as confirmation bias shields you when you actively seek information, the backfire effect defends you when the information seeks you, when it blindsides you. Coming or going, you stick to your beliefs instead of questioning them. When someone tries to correct you, tries to dilute your misconceptions, it backfires and strengthens them instead. Over time, the backfire effect helps make you less skeptical of those things which allow you to continue seeing your beliefs and attitudes as true and proper.
In 1976, when Ronald Reagan was running for president of the United States, he often told a story about a Chicago woman who was scamming the welfare system to earn her income.
Reagan said the woman had 80 names, 30 addresses and 12 Social Security cards which she used to get food stamps along with more than her share of money from Medicaid and other welfare entitlements. He said she drove a Cadillac, didn’t work and didn’t pay taxes. He talked about this woman, who he never named, in just about every small town he visited, and it tended to infuriate his audiences. The story solidified the term “Welfare Queen” in American political discourse and influenced not only the national conversation for the next 30 years, but public policy as well. It also wasn’t true.
Source: www.freerepublic.com
Sure, there have always been people who scam the government, but no one who fit Reagan’s description ever existed. The woman most historians believe Reagan’s anecdote was based on was a con artist with four aliases who moved from place to place wearing disguises, not some stay-at-home mom surrounded by mewling children.
Despite the debunking and the passage of time, the story is still alive. The imaginary lady who Scrooge McDives into a vault of foodstamps between naps while hardworking Americans struggle down the street still appears every day on the Internet. The memetic staying power of the narrative is impressive. Some version of it continues to turn up every week in stories and blog posts about entitlements even though the truth is a click away.
Psychologists call stories like these narrative scripts, stories that tell you what you want to hear, stories which confirm your beliefs and give you permission to continue feeling as you already do. If believing in welfare queens protects your ideology, you accept it and move on. You might find Reagan’s anecdote repugnant or risible, but you’ve accepted without question a similar anecdote about pharmaceutical companies blocking research, or unwarranted police searches, or the health benefits of chocolate. You’ve watched a documentary about the evils of…something you disliked, and you probably loved it. For every Michael Moore documentary passed around as the truth there is an anti-Michael Moore counter documentary with its own proponents trying to convince you their version of the truth is the better choice.
A great example of selective skepticism is the website literallyunbelievable.org. They collect Facebook comments of people who believe articles from the satire newspaper The Onion are real. Articles about Oprah offering a select few the chance to be buried with her in an ornate tomb, or the construction of a multi-billion dollar abortion supercenter, or NASCAR awarding money to drivers who make homophobic remarks are all commented on with the same sort of “yeah, that figures” outrage. As the psychologist Thomas Gilovich said, “”When examining evidence relevant to a given belief, people are inclined to see what they expect to see, and conclude what they expect to conclude…for desired conclusions, we ask ourselves, ‘Can I believe this?,’ but for unpalatable conclusions we ask, ‘Must I believe this?’”
This is why hardcore doubters who believe Barack Obama was not born in the United States will never be satisfied with any amount of evidence put forth suggesting otherwise. When the Obama administration released his long-form birth certificate in April of 2011, the reaction from birthers was as the backfire effect predicts. They scrutinized the timing, the appearance, the format – they gathered together online and mocked it. They became even more certain of their beliefs than before. The same has been and will forever be true for any conspiracy theory or fringe belief. Contradictory evidence strengthens the position of the believer. It is seen as part of the conspiracy, and missing evidence is dismissed as part of the coverup.
This helps explain how strange, ancient and kooky beliefs resist science, reason and reportage. It goes deeper though, because you don’t see yourself as a kook. You don’t think thunder is a deity going for a 7-10 split. You don’t need special underwear to shield your libido from the gaze of the moon. Your beliefs are rational, logical and fact-based, right?
Well…consider a topic like spanking. Is it right or wrong? Is it harmless or harmful? Is it lazy parenting or tough love? Science has an answer, but let’s get to that later. For now, savor your emotional reaction to the issue and realize you are willing to be swayed, willing to be edified on a great many things, but you keep a special set of topics separate.
Source: www.xkcd.com
The last time you got into, or sat on the sidelines of, an argument online with someone who thought they knew all there was to know about health care reform, gun control, gay marriage, climate change, sex education, the drug war, Joss Whedon or whether or not 0.9999 repeated to infinity was equal to one – how did it go?
Did you teach the other party a valuable lesson? Did they thank you for edifying them on the intricacies of the issue after cursing their heretofore ignorance, doffing their virtual hat as they parted from the keyboard a better person?
No, probably not. Most online battles follow a similar pattern, each side launching attacks and pulling evidence from deep inside the web to back up their positions until, out of frustration, one party resorts to an all-out ad hominem nuclear strike. If you are lucky, the comment thread will get derailed in time for you to keep your dignity, or a neighboring commenter will help initiate a text-based dogpile on your opponent.
What should be evident from the studies on the backfire effect is you can never win an argument online. When you start to pull out facts and figures, hyperlinks and quotes, you are actually making the opponent feel as though they are even more sure of their position than before you started the debate. As they match your fervor, the same thing happens in your skull. The backfire effect pushes both of you deeper into your original beliefs.
Have you ever noticed the peculiar tendency you have to let praise pass through you, but feel crushed by criticism? A thousand positive remarks can slip by unnoticed, but one “you suck” can linger in your head for days. One hypothesis as to why this and the backfire effect happens is that you spend much more time considering information you disagree with than you do information you accept. Information which lines up with what you already believe passes through the mind like a vapor, but when you come across something which threatens your beliefs, something which conflicts with your preconceived notions of how the world works, you seize up and take notice. Some psychologists speculate there is an evolutionary explanation. Your ancestors paid more attention and spent more time thinking about negative stimuli than positive because bad things required a response. Those who failed to address negative stimuli failed to keep breathing.
In 1992, Peter Ditto and David Lopez conducted a study in which subjects dipped little strips of paper into cups filled with saliva. The paper wasn’t special, but the psychologists told half the subjects the strips would turn green if he or she had a terrible pancreatic disorder and told the other half it would turn green if they were free and clear. For both groups, they said the reaction would take about 20 seconds. The people who were told the strip would turn green if they were safe tended to wait much longer to see the results, far past the time they were told it would take. When it didn’t change colors, 52 percent retested themselves. The other group, the ones for whom a green strip would be very bad news, tended to wait the 20 seconds and move on. Only 18 percent retested.
When you read a negative comment, when someone shits on what you love, when your beliefs are challenged, you pore over the data, picking it apart, searching for weakness. The cognitive dissonance locks up the gears of your mind until you deal with it. In the process you form more neural connections, build new memories and put out effort – once you finally move on, your original convictions are stronger than ever.
When our bathroom scale delivers bad news, we hop off and then on again, just to make sure we didn’t misread the display or put too much pressure on one foot. When our scale delivers good news, we smile and head for the shower. By uncritically accepting evidence when it pleases us, and insisting on more when it doesn’t, we subtly tip the scales in our favor.
- Psychologist Dan Gilbert in The New York Times
The backfire effect is constantly shaping your beliefs and memory, keeping you consistently leaning one way or the other through a process psychologists call biased assimilation. Decades of research into a variety of cognitive biases shows you tend to see the world through thick, horn-rimmed glasses forged of belief and smudged with attitudes and ideologies. When scientists had people watch Bob Dole debate Bill Clinton in 1996, they found supporters before the debate tended to believe their preferred candidate won. In 2000, when psychologists studied Clinton lovers and haters throughout the Lewinsky scandal, they found Clinton lovers tended to see Lewinsky as an untrustworthy homewrecker and found it difficult to believe Clinton lied under oath. The haters, of course, felt quite the opposite. Flash forward to 2011, and you have Fox News and MSNBC battling for cable journalism territory, both promising a viewpoint which will never challenge the beliefs of a certain portion of the audience. Biased assimilation guaranteed.
Biased assimilation doesn’t only happen in the presence of current events. Michael Hulsizer of Webster University, Geoffrey Munro at Towson, Angela Fagerlin at the University of Michigan, and Stuart Taylor at Kent State conducted a study in 2004 in which they asked liberals and conservatives to opine on the 1970 shootings at Kent State where National Guard soldiers fired on Vietnam War demonstrators killing four and injuring nine.
As with any historical event, the details of what happened at Kent State began to blur within hours. In the years since, books and articles and documentaries and songs have plotted a dense map of causes and motivations, conclusions and suppositions with points of interest in every quadrant. In the weeks immediately after the shooting, psychologists surveyed the students at Kent State who witnessed the event and found that 6 percent of the liberals and 45 percent of the conservatives thought the National Guard was provoked. Twenty-five years later, they asked current students what they thought. In 1995, 62 percent of liberals said the soldiers committed murder, but only 37 percent of conservatives agreed. Five years later, they asked the students again and found conservatives were still more likely to believe the protesters overran the National Guard while liberals were more likely to see the soldiers as the aggressors. What is astonishing, is they found the beliefs were stronger the more the participants said they knew about the event. The bias for the National Guard or the protesters was stronger the more knowledgeable the subject. The people who only had a basic understanding experienced a weak backfire effect when considering the evidence. The backfire effect pushed those who had put more thought into the matter farther from the gray areas.
Geoffrey Munro at the University of California and Peter Ditto at Kent State University concocted a series of fake scientific studies in 1997. One set of studies said homosexuality was probably a mental illness. The other set suggested homosexuality was normal and natural. They then separated subjects into two groups; one group said they believed homosexuality was a mental illness and one did not. Each group then read the fake studies full of pretend facts and figures suggesting their worldview was wrong. On either side of the issue, after reading studies which did not support their beliefs, most people didn’t report an epiphany, a realization they’ve been wrong all these years. Instead, they said the issue was something science couldn’t understand. When asked about other topics later on, like spanking or astrology, these same people said they no longer trusted research to determine the truth. Rather than shed their belief and face facts, they rejected science altogether.
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else-by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusion may remain inviolate
- Francis Bacon
Science and fiction once imagined the future in which you now live. Books and films and graphic novels of yore featured cyberpunks surfing data streams and personal communicators joining a chorus of beeps and tones all around you. Short stories and late-night pocket-protected gabfests portended a time when the combined knowledge and artistic output of your entire species would be instantly available at your command, and billions of human lives would be connected and visible to all who wished to be seen.
So, here you are, in the future surrounded by computers which can deliver to you just about every fact humans know, the instructions for any task, the steps to any skill, the explanation for every single thing your species has figured out so far. This once imaginary place is now your daily life.
So, if the future we were promised is now here, why isn’t it the ultimate triumph of science and reason? Why don’t you live in a social and political technotopia, an empirical nirvana, an Asgard of analytical thought minus the jumpsuits and neon headbands where the truth is known to all?
Source: Irrational Studios/Looking Glass Studios
Among the many biases and delusions in between you and your microprocessor-rich, skinny-jeaned Arcadia is a great big psychological beast called the backfire effect. It’s always been there, meddling with the way you and your ancestors understood the world, but the Internet unchained its potential, elevated its expression, and you’ve been none the wiser for years.
As social media and advertising progresses, confirmation bias and the backfire effect will become more and more difficult to overcome. You will have more opportunities to pick and choose the kind of information which gets into your head along with the kinds of outlets you trust to give you that information. In addition, advertisers will continue to adapt, not only generating ads based on what they know about you, but creating advertising strategies on the fly based on what has and has not worked on you so far. The media of the future may be delivered based not only on your preferences, but on how you vote, where you grew up, your mood, the time of day or year – every element of you which can be quantified. In a world where everything comes to you on demand, your beliefs may never be challenged.
Three thousand spoilers per second rippled away from Twitter in the hours before Barack Obama walked up to his presidential lectern and told the world Osama bin Laden was dead.
Novelty Facebook pages, get-rich-quick websites and millions of emails, texts and instant messages related to the event preceded the official announcement on May 1, 2011. Stories went up, comments poured in, search engines burned white hot. Between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. on the first day, Google searches for bin Laden saw a 1 million percent increase from the number the day before. Youtube videos of Toby Keith and Lee Greenwood started trending. Unprepared news sites sputtered and strained to deliver up page after page of updates to a ravenous public.
It was a dazzling display of how much the world of information exchange changed in the years since September of 2001 except in one predictable and probably immutable way. Within minutes of learning about Seal Team Six, the headshot tweeted around the world and the swift burial at sea, conspiracy theories began to bounce against the walls of our infinitely voluminous echo chamber. Days later, when the world learned they would be denied photographic proof, the conspiracy theories grew legs, left the ocean and evolved into self-sustaining undebunkable life forms.
As information technology progresses, the behaviors you are most likely to engage in when it comes to belief, dogma, politics and ideology seem to remain fixed. In a world blossoming with new knowledge, burgeoning with scientific insights into every element of the human experience, like most people, you still pick and choose what to accept even when it comes out of a lab and is based on 100 years of research.
So, how about spanking? After reading all of this, do you think you are ready to know what science has to say about the issue? Here’s the skinny - psychologists are still studying the matter, but the current thinking says spanking generates compliance in children under seven if done infrequently, in private and using only the hands. Now, here’s a slight correction: other methods of behavior modification like positive reinforcement, token economies, time out and so on are also quite effective and don’t require any violence.
Reading those words, you probably had a strong emotional response. Now that you know the truth, have your opinions changed?
You Are Not So Smart – The Book
If you buy one book this year…well, I suppose you should get something you’ve had your eye on for a while. But, if you buy two or more books this year, might I recommend one of them be a celebration of self delusion? Give the gift of humility (to yourself or someone else you love). Watch the trailer.
Order now: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - iTunes - Books A Million
Links:
The study on corrections and the backfire effect
The study on interpreting Kent State
Harvard Journalism school on narrative scripts
Obama’s birth certificate sways some, but not all skeptics
The study on biased assimilation
Dan Gilbert on motivated reasoning
When the Internet thinks it knows you
Paul Krugman on the Welfare Queen myth
A New York Times article on Reagan’s Welfare Queen story
A Welfare-Queen activism website
Osama Bin Laden conspiracy theories race around the world
0.9999 repeated to infinity is 1
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Ah, and it’s back!
oops…
go to http://www.infowars.com
go there and you debunk their research
you can try but you won’t be able to if you do your homework, then you will see the truth
Have you tried? It’s not that difficult.
Of course, there’s always the issue of people changing what they said they believed all along once they have been convinced otherwise, to complicate things further.
Yep. I did a post on that too. Look for hindsight bias.
I remember! I find it fascinating how these things work together/against each other.
There’s also the risk that it’s a conscious façade, in order to save face, rather than a subconscious bias.
Well, I suppose that’s better than maintaining false beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence.
The picture you attributed to http://www.gamespy.com is actually a screen-cap from the game ‘System Shock 2′. A game made by Irrational Studios/Looking glass Studios, published by Electronic arts. Gamespy is a largely irrelevant website that happens to contain this image, but I believe that credit should go where credit is due.
Thanks for this. I changed it.
Cool, normally I don’t much mind trivial attributions, but System shock was a genre changing work of art and deserves more love than it gets, thanks!
I agree. I got lazy on that one.
A nice demonstration of how many of us do adjust to new facts, so long as we don’t have to much invested in our existing belief or understanding.
There’s no way that image was from System Shock 2. You can clearly go to gamespy.com and find that very image. If it happens to be on System Shock 2, then it must have been ripped off from gamespy.
*snicker*
Here is a reason why science loses credibility–
“Some psychologists believe there is an evolutionary explanation. Your ancestors paid more attention and spent more time thinking about negative stimuli than positive because bad things require a response. Those who failed to address negative stimuli failed to keep breathing.”
There is nothing scientific about that statement. Psychologists cannot observe the stimulation patterns of our ancestors. The assertion cannot be tested or recreated: it is mere speculation. And yet hokum like this is recited to support your argument and many others. Scientists, psychologists, and others should stick to what they know–to what they can observe, test, study, recreate, publish, and subject to scholarly criticism. If they did that, then perhaps more people would believe the scientists’ assertions regarding climate change and other matters which actually affect our daily lives.
I believe this is why evolutionary-psychology loses credibility, not science as a whole. Even among evolutionary biologists and psychology experts, the emerging field of Evo-Psych is very controversial.
Thanks for the comment. This is why I stated it was speculation and then followed it with what was suggested by a study which found humans focus on negative information more than positive. To be more clear, I added the word “speculate” to the sentence.
All human behavior, even that which is culturally influenced, is the result of natural selection and other evolutionary forces.
Society is built on top of behavior and cognition, biases and fallacies, predilections and assumptions – all of which are generated by a brain which evolved in a completely different environment than today.
So, yes, evo-psych is valid. The questions is, how deep can we plunge into our evolutionary history with the tools at hand, and how much of our speculation is just educated guessing? How much of it is just astronomy without telescopes?
As long as we are debating empirical, quantified data, it’s science.
But, you are right to raise an eyebrow, as much reporting on evo-psych focuses on the speculation and then adds more speculation on top of it.
It’s also important to realize the limits of evo-psych and the strong effect a continuing culture can have on both bias/fallacies/etc. and even on the development of children’s brains. It’s not just genes that evolve, but memes as well.
Totally true.
“Scientists, psychologists, and others should stick to what they know–to what they can observe, test, study, recreate, publish, and subject to scholarly criticism.”
Yeah! Since we don’t have a videotape of the Pleistocene, we should just give up trying to figure any of it out and assume (despite the mountains of data we do have) that it never happened. I mean, if we can’t recreate 1.6 million years of Pleistocene in a test tube, we must be able to learn nothing from evolutionary hypotheses, right? So… since we can’t observe human evolution, every claim about it must be false a priori, right? And because of that iron-clad logic, there’s no such thing as human nature, right?
Yawn.
Wouldn’t it be great to go back to believing that magical superheroes from outer-space are responsible for everything? Or maybe, just maybe, if we can sell enough books telling parents how to properly indoctrinate their children, the world will be a perfect place.
Yawn.
So there was a magical big bang creating the earth? The possibility that this big bang created everything just right for life to exists is just as hard as believing there is a ‘superhero’ creating everything.
There as still no facts about the creation of the earth…
There are facts. There are a lot of disagreements about how to interpret the facts, but there are facts. There is the cosmic redshift, there is the background microwave radiation. There is the structure of the earth itself, gleaned via earthquakes. There is matter, which we can observe directly.
As for the hypothetical “big bang”, there’s nothing magical about it, just a lot of stuff we don’t know. It’s a logical (though possibly incorrect) interpretation of the observed expansion of the universe (see “redshift” above). If we’re expanding, we must have been smaller.
As for the anthropic principle (i.e., conditions are, Goldilocks-like, “just right” for life), a currently popular theory is that out of myriad big bangs, how odd would it be if NONE of them produced the conditions for life. We happen to be here, because this particular Big Bang produced a Universe conducive to us. In that sense, the anthropic principle is just a tautology.
There’s a big difference between gleaning information from radiocarbon-dated fossils and making educated (or sometimes not-so-educated) guesses based on behavior today, behavior that is influenced by a great number of things besides our evolutionary history.
I think that, done right, ev psych can offer us something. I thought the book Sex At Dawn was a good example of drawing plausible conclusions from sound, observable science in a number of fields. But ev psych’s reputation is not helped by the fact that the field is currently largely full of sexist, racist crackpots looking to confirm their own biases with *terribly* designed studies. For one thing, almost none of them are cross-cultural, something that would be the very first requirement if you were hoping to weed out influences other than evolutionary history.
That’s why Elaine Morgan’s books are a breath of fresh air. “Descent of Woman” is the best of them, though it was too entertaining to be taken seriously — like having no sense of humor means you’re more credible. Ha. They are all speculation, but they are educated speculation. There is usually more than one way to interpret facts, and real science allows for that.
“Yeah! Since we don’t have a videotape of the Pleistocene, we should just give up trying to figure any of it out and assume (despite the mountains of data we do have) that it never happened.”
I just cackled.
Ah, that wasn’t speculation, that was simple logic! Logic about what was probably the only thing of
influence around in those earlier times. Or, do you think there was some higher level of thinking
controlling the effects on the mind in those early times? If so, please state them, since the assertions,
rationally made “for cause” are the usual starting points for the concepts known as theories, which
store the materials needed to make sense of the “observations” in an initial effort to investigate
phenomena.
It would thus, be far more meaningful, for you to post your ideas, that explain the alternatives
to these assertions, and/or the underlying speculations as to how logic should be applied, or
thought to apply in this instance, than to simply assert that “because we don’t know, we can’t know”,
even if not is so many words.
Science is not “at fault” ever, it is merely inconclusive, incomplete or mistaken. For science can
only be thought to be “at fault” if and when it is asserted to be complete and correct, which it never
is.
But hey, isn’t this exactly what the article is about?
Obwon
ah i get it! you ARE trying to prove the point of this article! ha – i almost started on a whole pro-science tirade – then realized how futile it would be (from reading this post!), then realized you must’ve read the article and decided to test out the backfire effect yourself… KUDOS!
You obviously don’t understand the Scientific Method very well, do you? What the article described about a possible evolutionary explanation is what people with an IQ call an “hypothesis.” Translated into moron-speak, it’s an educated guess. Science allows for hypotheses; in fact, it’s a necessary ingredient to the Scientific Method.
In this instance, what you’re referring to is an hypothesis that cannot be proven or disproven at this time due to a lack of data. That doesn’t mean that the hypothesis is invalid or unscientific. It simply means that it will have to remain an untested hypothesis until such theoretical time that we’d be able to test it.
Our behaviors are a result of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, so although we can’t directly observer our ancestors, we can observe the results of their effective behaviors since they were passed down to us as propensities and predispositions. It tends to be the case that in complex organisms like primates and human beings, adaptation happens very, very slowly (versus in some micro-organisms, with with changes can be observed within a few generations) so really, our behavior hasn’t changed much over hundreds and even a few thousand years.
oh, and btw, EVERYONE has an IQ, it’s just that some have higher than others…
In a world where one day, eggs are good for you and the next day not, as with coffee, and salt, and dairies, etc. , developing beliefs and our strategy for accepting them or changing them becomes rather random and also dependent on how much evidence we have in support or against the said beliefs. Our instincts might be one of the best judges on when to keep your belief and when to change them? Is homosexuality an illness? It depends on how you look at homosexuality and on mental illness. Are eggs good for you? It depends on who you are, how many eggs, etc. So, maybe a fuzzy judgement on all issues and never being totally certain and respecting opposing opinions is the best thing and then yet, going with your heart and not blaming yourself or others for what happened.
“In a world where one day, eggs are good for you and the next day not, as with coffee, and salt, and dairies, etc.”
Except, it’s not. That’s a problem with bad science reporting. One study rarely shows conclusively that some food is good or bad for you. It’s just that science reporters tend to report the results as somehow conclusive. So you’ll get eggs being bad for you this week and good for you the next, and the like.
All I know is that any truth that seems as evident as night and day can turn out to be a falsehood and the most unthinkable, the truth. At least, this is how it seems to me.
Mehrzad — As Six said, that’s not Science, that’s science reporting: it’s the journalists who report the “news” as if it were a fact. Science never says “this is a fact” from one, or even a dozen, studies.
Kim – Science, etymologically means knowledge. Journalistic reports are also based on scientific studies. I remember a comedian (Stephen Wright) I believe once saying, just because I’m paranoid, it doesn’t mean everyone is not after me… So, the more you hear contrary facts, does not mean that you are necessarily wrong. It means you are being dissuaded more adamantly. Just because everyone is eating eggs everyday, or people say eggs are good, does not in fact mean that they are good – while it does not mean that they are bad either. Gandhi said First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. I am not saying that every persistence on every belief, and every resistance to every force, is necessarily a good or correct thing, but it is also not necessarily wrong, or an automatic behavior. –Mehrzad
Welcome back! We’ve all been eagerly waiting…any new details on the book?
Yes. It comes out October 27, but I’m not going to do an official announcement for a little while.
OOh this is the first i’ve heard you’ve got a book coming. I love your blog and always get excited when there is a new entry after a while!
I’ve been reading http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expanded-ebook/dp/B002C949KE/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1307732960&sr=1-1 per a recommendation I found somewhere in this blog and love these concepts.
Pssst: http://goo.gl/rtuvB
mmm pre-ordered, thanks!
The $64-question is how do we keep (or at least mitigate) the Backfire Effect from influencing our beliefs?
(The $64,000-question is, of course, how we can keep it from making others too stubborn to change their beliefs, but first we have to figure it out for ourselves. :))
Just knowing about it will help. As you can see from the Francis Bacon quote, we’ve long suspected this was true but science has just now started to unravel it and quantify it.
I, for one, cultivate an active suspicion of information that enforces my worldview. This is not to say that I don’t trust substantiating evidence – I simply try to remain aware that I have a cognitive preference towards it. When I read articles online I always – ALWAYS – look through the comments for a well-formed rebuttal or contradictory information, and I do this whether I agree with the conclusions of the article or not.
It is also necessary to recognize that one has a worldview and that, to some degree, it is inimical to change. The goal is to maximize the “fluidity” of one’s worldview and avoid the kind of rigidity that defines religious fundamentalists and hardcore political partisans. (None of this is to suggest, however, that your worldview should be so fluid as to have no real structure, or that everyone’s beliefs are valid. I have no patience for the kind of postmodern, epistemological relativism that some people subscribe to, which does as much to undermine science as religious dogma.)
As for getting other people to respect objectivity and possibly change their opinions, I try to help them examine why they believe what they believe. Are they loyal to an ideology or to the pursuit of truth? Are their convictions justified, or just that – convictions? As the Zen master Sent-ts’an said 1300 years ago, “If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between ‘for’ and ‘against’ is the mind’s worst disease.”
Good article, but you might want to provide a better example than the birther reference. Gallup showed a significant change in beliefs after the long form was released. http://www.gallup.com/poll/147530/Obama-Birth-Certificate-Convinces-Not-Skeptics.aspx
Thanks so much for this. I altered the wording to clarify. I still like the example, as there is a hardcore community of birthers who will never be swayed. I also added your link to the sources in the article.
A good “truther” description would also be a nice counterweight to any perceived political bias.
“The woman most historians believe Reagan’s anecdote was based on was a con artist with four aliases who moved from place to place wearing disguises, not some stay-at-home mom surrounded by mewing children.”
It is highly non-ironic given the nature of this post that the anecdote Reagan retold was actually true: “Joel Edelman, executive director of the Illinois Legislative Advisory Committee on Public Aid, has said his committee found that from early 1973 until mid-1974, [the woman] ‘used 14 aliases to obtain $150,000 for medical assistance, cash assistance and bonus cash food stamps.[....]She organized people and upwards of 100 aliases were used” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen
Furthermore, Reagan never actually said she was a “stay-at-home mom surrounded by mewing children” – I’m not sure where that invention came from.
You are proving my point.
If you continue to claim, “no one who fit Reagan’s description ever existed”, then I am definitely proving your point.
I appreciate your comment and concern, but I stand behind my statement. I acknowledged the evidence you are presenting when I made my point about Reagan’s hyperbole. There is evidence to suggest Reagan’s story was not true. I’ve provided the sources I used to draw my conclusions.
But isn’t the interpretation of the facts just as important as the facts themselves?
Yes. That’s the point of this post.
First off, great article.
Secondly…
OH NO THE WHITE WALL OF DEATH IS CUTTING OFF MY LOVELY COMMENT!
Here is another great example. You have in fact provided no sources regarding Reagan’s intent, and can’t be bothered to recant claims that the anecdote is fictional.
I know it makes for a nice resonance with your overall theme, but wouldn’t you rather strive to be the sort of person who can actually be persuaded by evidence?
Again, you are illustrating the very point of this post. Perhaps we both are.
Are you saying that Wikipedia isn’t a trustworthy source? I’d say that, given what happened to the history of Paul Revere after Palin’s rewrite of history, trusting Wikipedia to be true is out.
There, I said it.
Wikipedia should itself never be fully trusted to be true in the first place. But it is often a good start and the References sections of entries are great jumping points. Regardless, your own depiction of Palin is also a perfect example of what the article and book were about. You, and others, have your opinion of Palin. When she made her comments about Paul Revere, she was jumped upon for getting the story completely wrong. When it was found that her story was not completely wrong, but for the most part correct, except for some of the minor details, the attack narrative completely changed: she was attacked just as strongly for techical errors as for allegedly getting the main story wrong, by the same type of people who apparently believed (or didn’t know) the main story in the first place. The rationalizations following were incredible (and often logically fallacious), but her errors would not have been nearly as newsworthy as the perception of her initial mistake. You can do your own google searches to find articles quoting historians on the matter, and bypass Wikipedia altogether. Dismiss this at your own peril of being a perfect example of what this article is all about.
Yes, David at the very least, you “both” are: you’re contributing to proving your own point. The Wikipedia entry references news articles naming the person and providing more information. You may certainly argue that Reagan had certain facts wrong within his hyperbole, and you can argue that extremely pedantically and technically speaking, a person who did something X times, as Reagan complained, didn’t really exist because the person who really existed (Linda Taylor) did something Y times instead is true. I don’t appreciate the hyperbole either, nor the factual errors. But to imply that the issue itself is false – which is what you actually do – is in fact an example of you falling victim to the same thing you write about. It’s OK, by the way… You’re human. Just because you’re the author of a book about it does not mean that you’re immune.
Reagan told a lot of “tall tales” He quoted a famous general one time, and people were going crazy, in the days before the eminence of the net, poring through all sorts of history texts trying to figure out who this general was. It turned out it was a quote from one of his films..
The problem is that empirical evidence doesn’t leave much in the way of interpretation, which ultimately nullifies some of the comments you’ve made (i.e. “Well the fact say…”). The facts, truth be told, are irrelevant if what you’re saying is true because it provides for multiple interpretations of the facts. For instance…
We come across a bloody hammer at a crime scene and see that Mr. Green’s fingerprints are on the hammer. There’s a weak motive for him allegedly committing the crime (though it is a motive) and he has no alibi. Given the facts, while certain biases or plausibility structures may skew what the facts actually tell us (or don’t tell us).
The point in all of this is simply to say that when some people hold onto believes in spite of the evidence, it isn’t always a “backfire effect.” It could be that they have legitimate reasons for questioning the interpretation of the evidence or the evidence itself.
Thanks for the comment. I agree, skepticism is always a good thing.
My point is to show human beings aren’t consistent in applying skepticism and tend to exhibit the backfire effect concerning topics related to dogma, ideology, politics and other emotionally charged beliefs.
This is why the best route to clear thinking is to divorce emotions and judgements from words and topics.
Many useful and descriptive words are ruined by strong judgmental or emotional associations. For instance, “conspiracy” means “bad” actions done in secret. Remove the “bad” if you want to think clearly about conspiracies, since opinions about the “bad” or “good” of an action vary widely.
“other methods of behavior modification like positive reinforcement, token economies, time out and so on are just as effective and don’t require any violence.”
Not according to Alfie Kohn’s book Punished by Rewards.
Thanks for the comment. As I said in the post, research is ongoing. You can find naysayers concerning every topic under the sun. I prefer scientific consensus. I’ve provided sources above which support my statements.
“You can find naysayers concerning every topic under the sun. I prefer scientific consensus.”
Alfie Kohn’s book is an attempt to suss out the scientific consensus, that’s the whole point. The sources you’re citing are just taking a very superficial look at the research. There’s no question that spanking kids can improve their short term compliance, but this isn’t a sensible measure of efficacy. So when you see your Time magazine article and the AAP using short term compliance as their measure of efficacy it should be obvious that they don’t know what they’re talking about.
You prefer scientific consensus. What is your definition of scientific “consensus?” Is it statistical significance where a < .05? Is it a meta-analysis of all published research on the matter, or a well-constructed opinion survey of all scientists of a particular field, regardless of whether they are at public or private research facilities?
Thanks for this amazing post. Unfortunately, I can’t say if it’s really good or just confirms my beliefs ;-)
Facts??? Are there such ?
But how about people actually changing their opinions after an argument? I have seen it a lot of times. You haven’t?
Sure, but not when it comes to things like abortion, politics, religions, etc.
Are you sure? Or is that a reflection of your own biases, a tendency to disregard examples of people changing their views on those hot button issues because it doesn’t conform with the premise of this blog?
My own views on hot button issues have evolved over time, and probably will continue to. Some would call that open minded. Others would call it weak minded and noncommittal. Either is fine with me. That I chose the word “evolved” rather than “changed” reflects my own biases. Or my insufferable sense of self-importance.
Of course I am talking about situations when politics (or economic theory — which is just as arguable) is concerned. I have seen loads of examples of people changing their minds when they saw that their arguments are weak.
I, of course, am one of them. I wasn’t always a libertarian euroskeptic.
What is “a libertarian euroskeptic.”?
You don’t want to know.
Well, you have now. I was dragged kicking and screaming across the political spectrum pretty much one issue at a time, over the course of two decades. There was a major religious change along the way, though that was quicker, and in retrospect, not so large as if “felt” then.
That doesn’t mean I’m right now and was wrong then, but the change is pretty clear. I still have essays I wrote decades ago which infuriate me now.
Can I be your assistant?
Sorry that in my haste I did not mention that I agree greatly with the article, and have written on a related topic. In psychiatry/psychology, we are now categorising much lack of insight as anosognosia, where we were earlier attributing it to denial. It is a very interesting distinction to make, and will reward your study, I think.
Hindsight bias can be fascinating, for given enough material, one can indeed find similarities in earlier ideas. But if a murky theory were growing in one’s mind in 1995, which in 1998 looked 80% likely to settle in one spot – but a dramatic event moved one to the minority position, one could say with honesty “Well, I always thought that.” It wouldn’t be a full truth, but it would have some accuracy.
What sometimes does change opinions is the company one keeps, or wants to keep. We are social beings and move in the direction of our surroundings. If we are an Orange we might move to the Red or Yellow side if we marry or work with that color, and even take out full membership there. Relatedly, the desire to please a pretty girl has made many a conservative man more liberal over time. Barry Goldwater had dropped about a third of his conservatism in his later years because of the young girlfriend. I imagine there are equivalents female-to-male.
That’s unfortunate. I actually have seen – in fact been part of – just such a change of mind after heated debate and argument about one of those specific topics you mentioned. It can be done and has been done. I am living proof, along with the other person involved. We each were swayed so strongly by the other person’s arguments we actually switched sides of the issue. The problem as I see it is how you frame the debate. Simply arguing “the facts” will not persuade people; it will actually cause just this kind of thing. However, when you take things to “the logical conclusion” or otherwise open the debate wider than the narrow parameters of the issue, you would be amazed at what can happen. Satire, for example, is an excellent tool to use in these kinds of situations.
Aren’t we speaking in terms of broad trends? For any study there are outliers, or individuals who don’t fit into the norm.
Nonetheless, it does happen! (So does this just prove your point?: the Backfire Effect has again been at work, at least in one of us? – only if the Backfire Effect trumps basic logic – call it the Backfire Effect if you like, but I’ll take refuge in basic logic.)
In my experience I have observed that people with the rather naive “trust science, science is the way” attitude that we can see at work in the thought of Mr. McRaney have a distinct tendency to insulate their non-’scientific’ views (such as those on abortion or politics or religion or even science itself) from critique by making just the claim that Mr. McRaney does: people never change their mind on these issues… And of course, given that people never change their minds, what point is there in discussing these issues in a respectful and reasonable way, in actually listening to what others have to say? So I am justified in avoiding any real engagement with the views of those with whom I disagree. And finally, if I find myself exhibiting the Backfire Effect, then what of it? That’s just what our species does! Nothing to be concerned about. My exhibiting the Effect just shows how right I am! Yay for me! (Seriously though, serious shortcomings aside, interesting article.)
Yeah… ironically, the author claims that knowing about the Backfire Effect will help fight it, but it’s probably just going to be used as an excuse to avoid fighting it.
McRaney himself seems to be using it that way in these comment sections.
At the end of the day, all of us, even the most ethical, if pushed far enough, are capable of doing that which we consider most immoral. So, let’s not push each other that far.
It doesn’t look to me like you read the AAP policy that you cite. It says, in direct contradiction to what you call “the truth” about on spanking, that “spanking is a less effective strategy than time-out or removal of privileges for reducing undesired behavior in children.” Seems to me that you’ve already experienced the backfire effect yourself if you’re taking the Time article as “the current thinking” on spanking and disregarding the science that draws different conclusions.
I think he is actually illustrating the backfire principle to both proponents and opponents of spanking. If you are an opponent of spanking you are likely to read it as saying that spanking is not an effective or necessary means of discipline. If you are a proponent of spanking you will read it as spanking does not harm the child and is effective.
It was a brilliant move. Both sides of the debate get a taste of the action, with one statement that seemingly contradicts both sides.
If that was his intent then that was a interesting idea that would have been a great rhetorical move had it succeeded. But I don’t think the language he uses does what you’re suggesting it does. It says that spanking is effective to some extent. That’s also the gist of the Time article he cites, but it’s not actually the bottom line of the AAP policy statement, which, in weighing the science, comes out pretty unambiguously against spanking. To be clear, I’m not interested in having a debate about spanking. I’m interested in science and in how we think. The ideas of this essay are fascinating, and aside from my quibble with the mischaracterization of “the current thinking about spanking” I found it a terrific read.
Thanks for your comments. Matt is right, that was precisely my intent. I was trying to be concise though, and to trap readers in my maze I see I needed to add a few words. So, thanks to you guys, I’ve fiddled with the wording. I appreciate the feedback.
that was genius!
i appreciate the internet so much more now!
i used to hate useless discussions, and thought both sides were idiots. now i laugh at the knowledge of what’s really going on.
thank you.
While it is true that positive reinforcement is generally a better motivator, and it’s effects are much longer lasting, there are cases in which punishment is appropriate, usually when all other methods have failed. I have first hand experience with this as a parent. My daughter is very amenable to learning through reward, while my son occasionally needs punishment. Both of my kids are especially feisty, thank god. It must have been all that organic food I ate while I was pregnant.
Nice comeback!
Best post I ever read since the one about “Extinction Bursts”. Please keep feeding us with more and more info on our not-so-smartness.
(Although not having english as mother tongue might turn my reading a bit more difficult, I’m totally buying your book – ebook, hopefully)
to argue well, would the solution be to say that when trying to convince someone you need to address worldview, plausibility structures & emotional issues in addition to providing facts?
“As information technology progresses, the behaviors you are most likely to engage in when it comes to belief, dogma, politics and ideology seem to remain fixed. In a world blossoming with new knowledge, burgeoning with scientific insights into every element of the human experience, like most people, you still pick and choose what to accept even when it comes out of a lab and is based on 100 years of research.”
Unfortunately, if what you say is true (and I do think there is much truth to it) the scientists who worked in the lab and researched for 100 years are just as prone to confirmation bias and the backfire effect as the rest of us.
So, there’s really nothing for us to do but “pick and choose” what we believe. We all pick our own experts.
Whether we use wisdom in doing so, or not, is another question.
I think you misunderstand Science. The whole idea of blind studies and control groups and other, often awkward, techniques of science, is to get rid of personal bias. Trying to work personal bias out of the results is also the reason they say, “One study does not a fact make.” You need to get the results repeatedly to start to say it’s true. And they keep honing the techniques to further get rid of bias. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than any amount of speculation.
That may work just fine with hard sciences, but is impossible to control for completely in the social sciences. Even if the collection of social science data were done under the most ideal, unbiased circumstances, the subsequent synthesis of that data into conclusions and discussion by social scientist are tainted by the fact that they are human beings. There is a joke among some who are familiar with the technique called Principal Components Factor Analysis: that it should be renamed to Principal Compulsions of Factor Analysists.
As someone in the fields of peace & reconciliation and who uses rhetoric, debate, discussion, and facts in engagement, I am totally unqualified to speak to the science, but am moved to ask whether, knowing this, we should consider moving away from the typical debate format, formal or informal, when it comes to moving thought away from the false to the true (I don’t mean this to sound nearly as manipulative as it does on re-reading). What I’m trying to get at is the question: if facts won’t move us, what will? Collective delusion serves no good purpose, so how do we train ourselves to be open to receive contradictory facts to the views we hold dear? How do we engage others in a way that allows them to incorporate new information into their thinking? Now that I have this information, what do I do with it, other than despair?
Why despair? Right now I am sure that there are people in your life, certainly your professional life, who are reasonably mature and can exercise critical thinking in a moral context. The problem is that there are so few such folks that open, public discussion, quickly deteriorates to include the the temperaments of the great many in attendance. The lowest common denominator in dominator culture is pretty low and is cross class. If anything the privileged classes, including most certainly the professional class, are even less developed and more prone to magical thinking than the general population, as in “industrial development is driving us to extinction therefore we need better industrial development.”
In your work you must know what I am talking about. There really is no alternative to dealing with people where they are at. Even then the dominator values dictate that the weak, including the emotionally delayed, are the legitimate prey of the strong. Under these conditions, and over time, this privileges people without functioning consciences (sociopath, psychopath or whatever label you use for these people) because they have the competitive advantage of lacking restraint. So, historically, cross culturally, dominator societies degrade into violence and corruption as a natural end point. Again, historically, these sociopath dominated regimes are conquered by neighboring groups and absorbed into subordinate positions in relation to the conquering societies. Now, however, the end stage self destructive social arrangement with sociopaths (how about that Dominic Strauss-Khan?) involves virtually the entire world so there is no more vital dominator culture to come along and us in our place.
Now either we confront the consequences of inculcating mental weakness to enhance the scale of our destructive hierarchies or we risk extinction as a species (or to put it another way, to join the mass extinction event that we initiated with our childish ways).
At any rate, we are born into the most interesting of times. What a shame to miss the show because we are too depressed to care. Be happy or go to sleep and wait for destruction. Those are the choices the third chimpanzee faces in this century. Happy people do the best work on the hardest problems.
herb
A good start is a book called Nonsense, How To Overcome It, by Robert J Gula. It was published in 1979, but not much has changed since the book came out. It has been my constant companion since I bought the book when it was new. It is far and above worth many times the price paid for the book in knowledge and understanding. The author has subsequent related books. The point is that we are not born critical thinkers and it is an ongoing process to get things right. Philosophers have said “Know Thyself” which means of course that we need to discover just what our biases are and make the attempts at least to live with facts as closely as possible, however contradictory. We are as human beings a work in progress just as evolution seems to have wired us this way. No more powdered wigs or tricornered hats anymore, unless you’re trying to make a point. Though I’m a bleeding heart liberal, I try to leave myself open to the possibility I might be full of crap and go from there. It makes a person a little unsure, uncertain as to what to believe, or think, but hey, can there ever be certainty on issues that are so fluid and not so black and white on issues of gov’t policy, and topics that have been presented in this article.
Thanks for the article and upcoming book, I intend to spread around knowledge of the backfire effect.
Codependents Anonymous service workers ran into this difficulty in trying to resolve differences among themselves over the years so for the last few years they have been using a process called Community-Based Decision Making. It is described in the Fellowship Service Manual accessible at CoDA. org.
I have not experienced it myself but I keep hearing comments from others that it really does work.
“Community-Based Decision Making”. Huh. Is that anything like democracy?
I never said what I just said.
Liar. :P :D
no, he is telling the truth!
This is one of the saddest articles I have read in a while, because it so convincingly sincere. This, and many such articles that seek to plumb “human nature” are dead in the water right away because of the premise that “human nature” is some sort of unitary concept and if we can just decipher the rosetta stone of psychological research all will be illuminated.
This sort of thinking draws its energy from the main spring of our dominator culture – superiority and the assigning of roles on a dominance hierarchy. This is not the way to think scientifically and will always lead you into a descending spiral of confusion. In the extreme this superiority bias results in attitudes like “if the poor could just learn to act like the rich they could solve their problems.”
From the comments it seems like many are taken in by this sort of thinking along with the author.
Very sad and very predictable. The citizens of a dominant imperial culture always think like this and become very confused when the barbarians destroy them. To me, as a pediatrician looking at human life as a process of development that can, at any time, in in various ways, be interrupted, the answer to the discontents of civilization is to recognize that complex dominator cultures manufacture the developmentally delayed (child abuse, miseducation, maintaining an emotional climate of fear of the other) people so as to have a population that is easily controlled and rounded up into armies of insane three year olds to go steal, murder and terrorize to the benefit of their betters. In such societies actual adult emotional intelligence and critical thinking are suppressed to the point of making rational discussion almost impossible as folks will be clinging to their infantile thought processes (the article is essentially about magical thinking in the preschool developmental stage) as a matter of survival.
So sad.
herb
For some of these examples, they are about more than just facts or science.
Like, if science found out that spanking made kids behave better and didn’t damage them psychologically in any way, I still wouldn’t hit my kids because it would make me feel bad to do it. I could perhaps accept it wasn’t doing anything wrong, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
As for weapons of mass destruction, let’s say they DID find something in Iraq, that doesn’t mean that I would have to admit I was wrong in thinking the US should stay out of there. WMDs were, after all, assumed to have been in Iraq initially, even by anti-war folks like myself. The issue is a lot more complicated than that.
Furthermore, shouldn’t a reasonably intelligent individual be skeptical of a strange article they’re handed in a psych experiment if it doesn’t mesh with things they know to be true? Confirmation bias and the backfire effect doesn’t mean there isn’t a truth we can stick to and know.
You are correct. Another politically biased example is that given toward Ronald Reagan’s “Welfare Queen” example: Does this article ever prove Regan was lying to get elected as insuinated? No. Have I witnessed hundreds of abusers of the welfare/entitlement system? Absolutely. So am I now flawed if I adopt Regan’s welfare example into my personal belief structure? Not at all. IF someone reads this article and comes away feeling even more intellictually superior as a liberal are they then not guilt of the exact condition mentioned therein?
You just provided the grist for the article to be true proving the author’s point. I would like to see your list of the hundreds of abusers of the welfare/entitlement system.you have witnessed. Witnessed, really? So why have not engaged in a crusade to revamp the system and get these deadbeats out of the system? If they are actually there. Exaggeration, wow. Our little discussion here is proving the authors point, you are in the position of standing up for Reagan’s anecdotal BS, and I on the other hand think Reagan used the lowest form of evidence to make his point. Anecdotal evidence is usually suspect. There were at the time of Reagan’s story, journalists who looked for his “welfare Queen” but could not find anyoine like that. They wanted to verify his story, pesky reporters, always looking for the facts and evidence for issues, buncha shills.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m just talking here. In any system, there are going to be those who game the system, but why do we attack the poor with their welfare, but not the rich and their tax loopholes and the corporations’ manipulation of the tax code and the rules of regulation? Tea partiers complain of gov’t oppression and high taxes, but never complain about the corporations oppression and power over us citizens.
Okay, I’m done, I just verified the article’s premise..
It’s pretty clear that all religions started that way from Moses parting the Red Sea to Joseph Smith talking to God ….
Religion hater: Has anyone recently challenged your conclusions as to why you hate believers so much? Its trendy right now to hate both Israel, and the American Christian population. Can you even back your conclusions with fact or specific examples as to why you hate..?
you’re saying hate should have a rational reason? Then should love also have a rational reason? Does any emotion have a rational reason? That said, I tend to dislike the American Christian right-wing population because they want to kill me. There’s loads of baloney on top of it, but at base, they want to kill me. Isn’t disliking them for that about as rational as it gets?
Yes, they want to “kill” you. And any evidence to the contrary is of course, evidence that you are correct.
“The people who were told the strip would turn green if they were doomed tended to wait much longer to see the results, far past the time they were told it would take.”
This should read “wouldn’t turn green”
You are incorrect, sir.
I am looking for a Venn Diagram which contains the following sets intersecting with each other: Confirmation Bias, Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, Hindsight Bias and Backfire Effect. Somebody please let me know if it can be done.
That Venn Diagram would include everyone I argue with on the Internet! :)
I was waiting for a new post: this blog is always a great read! Do you plan to write something about boundend confidence too?
Sorry: BOUNDED confidence
Brilliant. :)
noice
>> “when your beliefs are challenged, you pore over the data, picking it apart, searching for weakness”
How about when *your* beliefs in scientism are challenged? (The author’s evident belief system)
Unfortunately, this article is an example of the fallacy of ‘infallibility’. He has defined (by the propositions he makes which imply the axiom) that himself is an infallible source. He buttresses this by referring to authority: “Science has the answer”.
Well, so you say. But did you consider that confirmation bias and biased assimilation may be influencing your own essay on the backfire effect? There is no recognition of this in the article.
One last thing. No logical person will appreciate the philosophical prestidigitation offered in the second last paragraph as a confirmation. Both major view points were presented as true so of course anybody reading it will see their own view confirmed. Because both were! This is not an example of the narrow tests used earlier to discover the backfire effect, but merely sleight of hand to confirm the article to the reader.
Which makes me wonder if the article itself is a “test” …
You might be on to something…
Your evidence that challenging my deepest convictions with evidence will only entrench them more deeply, has merely entrenched more deeply my deep conviction that when challenged by evidence, I will update my beliefs according to the evidence I have.
The problem with almost every piece of evidence or opinion is that it is biased (including this one) . This is something that isn’t particularly new. In regards to the article one of the underlying biases is that the backfire effect is in itself detrimental (this may not have been explicitly stated, correct me if i’m wrong). I for one believe it exists clearly. I also think that a possible explanation for its existence is to add inertia to the speed at which you can change your mind. If it didn’t exist would that mean you would change your mind every day if the latest evidence contradicted what was presented to you on the previous day? Also to state that your convictions do not get weaker when faced with contradictory evidence is not the same as your convictions getting stronger when faced with contradictory evidence. Most of the studies presented don’t try to clearly differentiate between these cases. Could the reason be that if the article stated that your beliefs stay the same when provided with contradictory evidence would be less interesting?
A very interesting article though.
No, my opinion wasn’t changed, partially because I already knew of that research, and partially because, as a 6 time father, I had already discovered that a smack on the backside was very effective in emergency situations (where there isn’t time for positive priming) but also that it isn’t the pain but just the sound that is needed; I quickly learned a loose-hand slap that would make a terrific noise on the plastic around a diaper and after that, the memory of the thunder was enough that just to suggest I might do it post-pottytraining would gain enough attention to negotiate a quick compliance ;)
but I have, all my life, felt broken simply because nearly every day I learn something that challenges my beliefs and I then accommodate the new information, or I toss out my old thinking and start over. Many books, articles, musical works and even conversations have changed my life with sometimes just the simplest most elegant of ease. Some of those have later become overturned by later findings, sometimes back to where I was before, but I thrive on the new ground, it is exhilarating to find that quantum effects may have large-scale repercussions, that Conservatiism might have a valid point, or that climate change may not be man-made, or that it is, it is like opening doors to a vast new meadow ripe for discovery. Naturally I gravitated to astronomy; as we say, there is nothing more worthless than last year’s astrophysics textbook.
Needless to say, this tends to alienate me from my peers, so most often I will feign a position, just for the sake of fitting in.
Reminds me of the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.
I would submit this article does (2) things effectively: First, it articulates a human condition we all suffer from, seemingly built into our DNA, which thwarts our ability to see clearly the reality of any given subject. Secondly, it poorly attempts to come off as politically un-biased when the author in fact has weaved a web of so-called examples which portray conservatives as the hosts of this condition, and leaving the liberal even more intellectually superior. What a clever ploy. Do I even need to disect the article to prove it to you?
I’ve attempted to be even-handed. I could cite an endless number of examples from camps liberal, conservative and everything in between, but I went with these because I like them. It should be clear from the article that this is a bias ALL humans exhibit. So, I apologize if it comes off as slanted.
Yes, it is clear from the article that all humans exhibit it, but it is also easy to perceive from the article (or “confirm” if you are of the “liberal” mindset) that the magnitude of of the effect is on one side more than the other. Everyone has it, but some people more than others. It’s pretty easy to see, based on your examples and wording, who you think they are. Sure, everyone has biases. Making your own bias clear up front would probably endear you to similarly-thinking fans, and might make your argument more easily accepted by those on the other side, who would know your honest intentions up front (rather than “confirm” what they believe, often for good reason, about typical articles like this).
That’s because liberalism and conservatism are not “sides.” Legitimacy isn’t automatic.
I find conservatives entertain a far more rigid, belief-based perception of reality than liberals. Just my observations over the years.
Conservatives are more rigid, but not more ‘belief-based’ (that’s nonsensical). Conservatives are less tolerant of cognitive dissonance, i.e., if something doesn’t make sense they reject whatever they perceive to be the source of the logical inconsistency. (This makes them more rigid, but that’s only sometimes a bad thing.) At least this was the result of a recent brain study done in Montreal, though I don’t recall the exact methodology. IIRC, the general conclusion was that ‘conservatives’ are better at recognizing danger, while ‘liberals’ are better at assimilating new information.
You leftists, you REALLY possess the need to feel intellectually superior to others don’t you? That is your greatest stumbling block to true wisdom in reaching common sense conclusions. History is full of “intellects” who adored themselves (and others) into complete failure, ala Nevile Chamberlin and Woodrow Wilson…
Conservatives are definitely more guilty of the backfire effect.They have an entire network that dessiminates BS every hour on the hour. Trickle down economics is a fine example. It failed but they keep beating the same drum. Liberals do not need to feel intellectually superior, they simply are. Facts are definitely in play where these dirty liberals are concerned, as in hey have a respect for. With blanket statemnents, you leftists, you liberal scum is implied and namecalling proves nothing. Conservatives are portrayed the way they are because they are the way they are and for all to see. For some reason these conservatives have come from the fringes into the mainstream and political discourse has become weakened in the process. The Tea Party, for example, they are the old 1930′s Liberty League, with the very same failed tenets. the ideas were wrong then and they are wrong now, they’re just being talked about more, only folks seem to have no sense of history and have allowed dead ideas to be reborn and given credibility it doesn’t deserve.
You’re right I’m a “lefty”, a bleeding heart liberal, and proud of it. So, there.
You may find the personality differences between liberals and conservatives interesting.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200612/the-ideological-animal
Good article. For those of you who didn’t read it, part of the conclusion says:
“If we are so suggestible that thoughts of death make us uncomfortable defaming the American flag and cause us to sit farther away from foreigners, is there any way we can overcome our easily manipulated fears and become the informed and rational thinkers democracy demands?
To test this, Solomon and his colleagues prompted two groups to think about death and then give opinions about a pro-American author and an anti-American one. As expected, the group that thought about death was more pro-American than the other. But the second time, one group was asked to make gut-level decisions about the two authors, while the other group was asked to consider carefully and be as rational as possible. The results were astonishing. In the rational group, the effects of mortality salience were entirely eliminated. Asking people to be rational was enough to neutralize the effects of reminders of death. Preliminary research shows that reminding people that as human beings, the things we have in common eclipse our differences—what psychologists call a “common humanity prime”—has the same effect.”
Interesting article, but where are the actual statistics? without them, it is an article about research that may or may not be itself biased, as the article even admits. Even the fact that the article uses the question of being “the informed and rational thinkers democracy demands?” shows a political bias, given the presumption that democracy demands such a thing in the first place (it doesn’t). I assume that there is a statistically significant number somewhere, but what is the correlation coefficient?
Yes, pot, meet kettle.
So how about Global Warming? Do you believe humans cause it?
It is interesting when people present various facts to support
what they believe. I have a problem whenever facts are manipulated
so people arrive at the conclusion you want versus what the truth is.
The truth is the truth. It cannot be denied.
Good point. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, but there are those who would even find “evidence” or a study by turncoat scientists that say otherwise. There are issues over time that have lines blurred due to counter experts.
Think: Creationism vs Evolution, Climate deniers saying sunspots cause warming, or that the earth is actually cooling vs 97% scientists who say the planet is warming due to humans avtivity, vaccines vs autism, smoking and cancer vs it ain’t so.
The point is that there are things like gravity that have only one side, but there are those who come up with notions of a brewing controversy that contradicts gravity(some fundamentalists have come up with the cause of gravity, it’s Jesus). If someone can blurr the issue into a manufatured controversy that is the goal, not to prove their view, but to muddy the water for what is true.
Well naturally you aren’t biased… and I know from this article that even if I posted up proof to say the opposite of what you believe…. that would just reinforce your belief even more.
The backfire effect…. I’ll remember this article…
Global warming? While I don’t think that we’re causing it; I do believe we are hastening it.
Climate science is very complex, but It is much easier to understand how the arguments denying global warming, or that we are causing or hastening it, are clearly wrong. The deniers contradict themselves over and over. They really have nothing to go on but their trumped up beliefs, misunderstandings, and misinformation. Check out http://climatecrocks.com for videos and references to the relevant science debunking the debunkers.
But don’t just believe me. Please find out for yourself, so YOU know with certainty, not just belief.
“The deniers contradict themselves over and over.” And oddly so do the supporters.
You say that “climate science is very complex” yet provide a link promising that people can “know with certainty, not just belief.”
You sound like a case study for the premise of the article.
Very interesting article! Explains a LOT about the divisiveness in our country!!
Just a thought – but I believe you may have meant the term “mewling” instead of “mewing”. Unless you meant children who were meowing or who were molting like hawks?
Mewling, yes. Blargh. I am not so smart. Fixed.
Someone should ask Mr. McRaney if someone presented him with evidence that this article is in error, whether or not he would change his mind about it’s assertions.
I’m open to the possibility.
If you are open to the possibility, doesn’t that contradict your findings? Shouldn’t you just become more convinced instead?
I don’t think it does. He stated the backfire effects happens “When your deepest convictions are challenged “.
Perhaps he doesn’t have particularly ‘deep convictions’ over the backfire effect.
People change their mind all the time over something that is not important to them. It’s when we have a really deep conviction about something (religion, politics, certain scientific theories, etc…) that the backfire effect happens.
For example I believe the backfire effect is factual from my own experience but if you could show me that there was a different and better way to look at it I would be willing to see your point of view.
However.. if I was one of the people who came up with the idea of the backfire effect in the first place… I might have a deep conviction regarding its truth and would probably argue to the ends of the Earth that it was a fact.
See the difference?
Sure…But why would he write an article about something he has no deep conviction to be true? And the terms ‘deep conviction’ seem subjective as well. Who’s to say what that means exactly? What’s the difference between conviction and belief anyway?
Well a conviction is simply a “strong belief”. A deep conviction is even more so. One can believe in something yet not have a particularly strong conviction about it.
As for why he would write the article if he did not have a deep conviction about it… it could be that he just feels it is an interesting human phenomenon that fits what this website addresses.
I could be wrong… but that is because I don’t have a deep conviction about it.
Now if we were discussing evolution vs. creationism… well then I would be much less prone to say “I could wrong”. You would be hard pressed to convince me that I was wrong in which side of the argument I believed in (though I do enjoy arguing both sides with people… just for fun).
Very enlightening article as usual. Do you have any thoughts as to how to overcome the backfire effect?
Philosophers have opined on this for a long, long time. So, it might be with us forever. The scientific method is really our best defense. The research on this is relatively new and ongoing.
That long Psychology Today article referenced above has a good answer at the end.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200612/the-ideological-animal
Hah… and here I thought I was walking around with a Cassandra Complex. Truth is everyone is misguided and so am I !!!
By the way… one of the issues I have regarding science telling me how to raise my children is that I believe that the scientist’s bias ends up in the result. If a scientist is against smacking a child it is probably likely their results from experimentation will support their believe. And the same can be said of those who is for more physical punishment.
That’s why you don’t go by one scientific article: there have to be multiple studies showing something is true before we start to think it’s true. Start.
However, hitting children is immoral, whether or not it is effective. :-)
Well written; And the only way I can see around the Backfire effect in yourself is to be willing to look at any subject from a neutral standpoint when confronted with a contradictory argument; and look at ALL of the information available to you, not just the stuff you agree with. I find I have to do that regularly because I like to take the Devils advocate position in most debates/discussions I find myself in; regardless of my own viewpoint.
What does that say about your psychology? :-)
I leave the comment threads to my readers after two days. So, from here forward if you see something which needs correction please email me at davidmcraney[at]gmail.com. Stay civil, and enjoy yourselves.
Great piece. I used to have a boss who would often say “let’s not confuse the story with the facts.” He was a great salesman! Thanks for this.
Here’s my theory: simple math. Take a sine wave. Add another sine wave in-phase. You have double of what you already had to begin with. However, add a sine wave 180 degrees out of phase, and you have zero. In the real world, it’s the difference between double the audio power on your speakers, and hearing absolutely nothing. It’s the cancellation effect, same as praise having less effect than criticism. Nobody wants to be left with nothing. Therefore, I propose that when we defend the indefensible, we are still reacting in a logical manner.
So if I change my beliefs in the face of ample supporting evidence and admit that maybe I was wrong, does that make me an anomoly among the general populace? Because I have, on many issues I used to believe very deeply in.
At first I wondered this too for myself but then thought otherwise. Everyone changes their mind on things they once held deep convictions over. There are plenty of people who switched between political stripes or religious beliefs. It isn’t uncommon…
Question is are you always so reasonable? Do you never block out fact to protect your beliefs? Few people can remain so open minded over every single topic.
I certainly could not say “never”, and I agree that in many cases my *first* reaction is to think “no way!”. But as I have gotten older I try to look at the world with an open mind, and I constantly question many of my beliefs and try to maintain an inquisitive nature. When I get into discussions with people over these things I look them up and see perspectives from all sides, not just to justify my own. That is how I have changed my own perspective many times. From what the article is saying it seems many people never get past that first reaction.
yes. these instances might be broadly referred to as “traditionalism”, for example.
If the Backfire Effect is so strong, how does one change their mind? People do change their minds … is there an opposite force that can counteract the backfire effect?
Wow, fantastic post, as usual!!
All the world’s mad save me and thee, and thee’s odd.
Leave it to the Bard.
Sorry. Wrong attribution. It is a Robert Owen quote.
But on a more serious note.
I was having a very similar debate with my politically active nephew the other day, on the utter futility of trying to change people’s minds on deep-rooted issues, most particularly in online forums where the ego is so vulnerable. Ironically, I failed to convince him. How apt.
Anyway, this is precisely the reason that I have long given up trying to change people’s minds once they are made up. I do debate, to the extent of my very humble limit, but the intention is not to change minds. My intention is rather to ‘win’ the argument (which usually happens when the other side declares me a fascist or Nazi or whatever). And the intention of THAT (winning the debate) is to influence other readers.
Although I have frequently changed positions, even some deeply-held ones, those changes have never been the result of online or public debates, so I’m obviously just as guilty. Over which short-falling I lose no sleep at all. I only throw in my penny’s worth in a debate if I have a firm position taken, otherwise I either lurk or ask questions.
The place I have seen people change drastically from online discussions was on the old Beliefnet (before the current owners wrecked it), when anti-gay people came to argue on the homosexuality debate board and changed completely by the time they were done. I don’t know why it happened, but it did, more than once or twice.
Fascinating article! Thank you for this.
Very thought provoking article, though I’m not exactly sure I agree with ALL of it… /irony Surely at some point evidence has to overwhelm our wants, right? Though of course, I’d only have anecdotal evidence of that.
I take the stance that truth does matter to people regardless of personal wants, though of course often to only to a small degree. People always search for ways to back themselves up; fat people still step on scales. The way we search for truth may be biased, but the desire to validate ourselves displays a belief that the truth does matter more than our opinion. Thus we devote enormous resources to try and make the truth come to our side.
I suppose the extent at which we are willing to twist the truth is different for each person, but once that line is crossed, people have no choice but to change sides in some way…
The problem is that we’re so good at twisting truth. The scientist says only science can show truth, the older person claims only experience can show truth, and on and on and on…
I’ve always thought it ended up going back to choice: how much am I, as an individual, willing to deny? Which would be different for each person.
C.S. Lewis was big on that in terms of the Chris. He talked about hell as being a voluntary place. His thought was that there was no point where a damned man desired to enter heaven. He or she would always deny God. There would never be a moment when sinners would realize error, because they would always bend the truth back on itself no matter what God showed or told them… But he didn’t think that everyone would be like that; thus the concept of salvation. He described himself during his turn from atheism to Christianity as “the most unwilling convert in all of England.”
Again, going back to individual choice of bias vs. truth.
Of course, I don’t have any special *insight* into the topic, I might be spouting nonsense. I certainly haven’t done any research, except anecdotal…
My philosophy is to have strong opinions on anything I understand well, and almost no opinions on the rest of it. Which may or may not be a very good philosophy depending on who you ask.
On a side note, I’m very surprised about the science behind spanking. I’m certainly not against spanking, but it’s one of those beliefs where you’re pretty sure the evidence would say you’re wrong if you took the time to actually research.
Not that a single blog validates my belief, but it could certainly help validate my bias.
I have always believed that every child is different and should be treated appropriately to their personality. Punishments that do not require inflicting harm always being preferable to spanking when possible.
My GF linked this to me as I have not read it yet. She says thats me in the XKCD comic.
I have been in a few online debates (arguments). I make it a point to stick to the topic and facts as best as I know them, and I don’t argue points unless I am certain I am correct. But I notice the “ad hominem” attacks against me when the other party feels backed into a corner. When it reaches that point I call them out on the personal and irrelevant attacks, usually stating that I do not wish to continue if the discussion is sinking to that level.
I have also made it a point to try to avoid this effect. I don’t let just anything in, but if something comes along that opposes what I think I know, I dig deeper to make sure the information is legit and if it pans out then I accept it. I think valid evidence that has passed peer review is “valid” evidence and must be handled as such.
As far as the spanking issue, I came to a similar conclusion on my own as a parent. (I was a step father for several years until me and the woman separated) Though spanking was a very viable punishment when I was a child, though it did slacken as I grew older, replaced with other punishment.
Punishment methods other than physical harm are preferable, but you must be firm with them, if you say no TV or toys for 3 days then you must stick to it, do not allow the child to sneak by playing with a small toy just because they are being good and quiet (they know they are doing wrong playing with the toy, that is why they are quiet) Also the punishments should be age appropriate. (as well as offence appropriate) Young children will never do well being grounded for more than a few hours at most, and the younger they are the less time is appropriate. Hence why timeout is good for toddlers and younger children. After that the punishment can get longer as fitting the offense, as short timeouts tend to stop being as effective as the child grows older. Some children can be overly resistant and stubborn to these types of punishments, sometimes it is a phase and other times it is the child’s personality. At those times a spanking may be a better course of action. I have found that I usually did not actually have to inflict much if any pain, that the mere act and motions usually were enough to get the child to listen.
BTW I love this site, I have recommended it to people on many occasions.
looking this over again, I think a shorter version would be… To be effective as a parent you should be firm and consistent. Stick to what you say and don’t allow the child to think they can pull one over on you.
The ex used to hate it when would sit and explain to the stepson what and why he did was wrong. She said he was too young at 6-7 to listen to me lecture him. I always told her I was at least giving him the chance to understand why other than just “do as I say”.
Classic liberal/conservative split. Conservatives go by authority, liberals have reasons for why a behavior is “bad”. I don’t remember any punishment from my parents in my childhood. They talked to me a lot. and yelled.
And how do “liberals” enforce their “reasons for why a behavior is ‘bad?” Ultimately, through “authority.”
I strongly disagree with all the opinions in this post. And I will disagree even more strongly if you try to convince me otherwise.
How was I able to go from true-blue believer to atheist, then?
BTW, it has been traumatic but I did change.
Because no psychological theory or rule applies to 100% of humans 100% of the time. You are simply an outlier on the bell curve, of whatever statistics were used to measure this effect, if indeed any were.
This is good (and troubling), but you could probably tighten up the prose a little bit — cut the word length by several hundred without sacrificing any of the content. Also, in the paragraph before the Dan Gilbert pull-quote, you write “pore” where I think you mean “pour.”
au contraire, your potential correction seems to be an increasingly common error. i’ve seen it about as often as i’ve seen “deviate” or “predominate/ly” when the person means “deviant” or “predominant/ly”.
my biggest pet peeve along these lines is “here here!” as an expression of encouragement/agreement/etc., which has probably been retro-justified in some silly way, but is originally/properly “hear, hear!”
(also, D asked the day before your comment that all corrections should be emailed to him as he had reached his two-day check limit.)
I’ve just started reading “The Three Christs of Ypipsilanti,” and the author distinguishes between primitive or core beliefs and beliefs which are peripheral and inconsequential. He also describes a fourth class of belief focused on which authorities will be accepted as sources for peripheral and inconsequential belief. Does the backfire effect occur across the spectrum of belief types, or is it only active in some of them?
It’s fun to step back and see the comments that unwittingly serve as evidence supporting this article, and sad to know that most of those commenters would never agree that that is the case.
You know, I think this should’ve been your first entry :P
It’s good to have you back!
i like the one about the burrito. but most of the internet is fiction these days, how can one tell what’s real and what’s not? other people’s stories online are not to be trusted.
The Backfire Effect is most obvious with the religions of the apocolyptic. The preacher and his ten followers who state the world is going to end, the global warming convert who states the seas will reach this height, the population bomb where the food shortages will be catastrophic by the year 2000, the global freezing that will wipe out the food supply.
The dates for these catastrophic events have come and gone….the science has changed or been shown to be junk, and yet the believers dig in their heals and say, “We may have been wrong about the time of the end of the world, but it is coming….it is just “such and such” date now…The particular preacher that we all believed in whose statements are being proven false may have been a little off base but he will be shown to be right, you’ll see. He was right about the end being near….just not the time or method.
Yup…backfire effect in full force.
The Backfire Effect is ONLY a short term reaction. It seems everyone stops at the first result, and fails to study the effect of continuous pressure. It seems pretty obvious that the backfire effect is short term only when one looks at the results the Feminist movement and the Civil Rights movement have had.
A single drop of water, repeated often enough, can pierce a mountain…
…which is not, in fact, single. ;)
I’ve always believed the backfire effect was utter rubbish — and this article has only further confirmed that.
Haha! I see what you did there.
The funny thing is that if there were people with legitimate and scientific reasons to question the backfire effect, they would be dismissed as simply being victims of it. Intentionally or not, the backfire effect has built into itself insulation from criticism.
I seem to be missing something on spanking.
Is the belief that I’m supposed to be backfiring against “spanking doesn’t work”? I’ve always thought the efficacy of the technique was a non-issue on a the-ends-don’t-justify-violent-means theory.
“After reading that there were no WMDs, they reported being even more certain than before there actually were WMDs and their original beliefs were correct.”
This just tells me what I have known all along: That most conservatives are… what was the phase they loved to use so much? Oh yes, barking moonbats.
It seems a more serious issue lies behind the Backfire Effect which is how much to trust news. There is certainly a variable amount of bias in everything we hear or read, but when news talk about Obama dead or false statements of WMD, this is intended to cause alarm, regardless people believe or not. Further articles agreeing or not will only increase the anxiety about the issue.
Would it be a way to make people debate about something of less importance when really serious matters are happening? It seems obvious that people will tend to reinforce their beliefs looking for sources to add to their arguments, mostly with the effect of ageing. However not knowing how much fact there is on the news and how deep manipulation can go feels really disturbing.
This explains why those I know who don’t believe anything associated with the word “conspiracy”, totally reject when conspiracy theory becomes conspiracy fact. The Backfire Effect is obviously not bias, and no one is immune.
Cute but need to internalize deep deep deep
This is a fantastic article on a fascinating subject. One of my favorite and most quoted song lyrics is “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” I think I recall this concept discussed in the book “Super Freakonomics” as well.
I am so grateful to have finally found the truth. Whoda thunk it was always waiting for us, right here on the in-ter-net?
In America, we never used to hold telethons for paternalistic megalomania. We used to just hold elections. But now that we can all post our truths on the in-ter-net, self help is just always one blog entry away.
I reject your reality and substitute my own!
I reject this hypothesis because I found 29 sties that dogmatically disagree with it.
I guess the challenge is to not be dogmatic about anything.
One thing that I love is the people that refuse to even debate a topic. Either they reject contrary information or are uninformed and don’t care. I don’t mind disagreeing, for I am sure at times I am wrong even when I push back. Some debates are a matter of faith and disagreement over perceptions and aren’t about what’s correct or incorrect. Then, it doesn’t matter one iota. Most arguments are ultimately meaningless, and it’s our ego that makes us hang on and struggle to convince others not to prove that we are correct, but that we aren’t wrong.
Peace,
Tex Shelters
I think it would VERY interesting to see if the results changed after being educated about the backfire effect. Essentially, are we stuck in a prison of our human flaws?
Just wanted to share a Dilbert comic that speaks exacly about this “when science disagrees with me”.
http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-03-16/
I don’t believe what this article is saying because of my preconceived notions of human psychology that were strengthened by reading this article which disagrees with my original beliefs.
Great piece. I do have to say that as a sometimes conspiracy theorist, I have a hard time understanding where to draw the line. Afterall, one can say “You are just believing what you want to believe, despite the evidence” and then conspiracy becomes dismissed as the realm of nuts. But the reality is that conspiracies *have* happened. Suggesting something is a government coverup is dismissed out of hand, often with no evidence supporting the conspiracy theory. But wholesale dismissal is wrong; afterall, Hitler did burn the Reichstag. And so, while there is no evidence that bin Laden was not killed in that compound, the dearth of evidence is also plain. The backfire effect has an effect on both sides. There are people who believe the idea that it didn’t happen is ridiculous, and as alternative theories with less support are spawned, it confirms to people that anything other than the official story is just hogwash. In our society, to say “bin Laden wasn’t killed” invites a “So what’s the real story”. Saying you don’t believe in X requires you to postulate Y. We are not a civilization that embraces ambiguity or lack of knowing. So if I say “I find the official story of the killing of bin Laden to be unconvincing”, I’m clearly a conspiracy theorist that believes he’s been in George Bush’s freezer for years, despite not saying anything of the sort. The Freezer people are so glad I agree with them and the non-Freezer people think I’m a nutball.
A. You are a fucking genius.
B. Can you write a book?
Brilliant article, holds tremendous truth…and an image of Shodan <3 You just made my day
I was getting ready to pre-order your book on Amazon and then i read your very skewed to the extreme left post and then the thought of ordering it…well it had a “back-fire effect”.
Nothing like a liberal living in his little “filter bubble” world digging his feet in.
Of course your post has described your unconscious reasoning as to why you will never get what i am saying.
I am sure there are enough libs who will make your filter bubble justification for your sickness a successful book. I just hope enough people see it for what it is….another hit piece from Move on dot org
To me it is so funny how you liberal narcissists never see you own shit. You keep walking in the direction you think is right while never considering the shit and stink you leave behind coming out your own ass.
And this doesn’t mean i don’t agree that the same thing happens with the right….it really is the one sided narcissistic self righteousness sickness of the religious left that continues to amaze me.
How can you be so one sided without at least calling your side out on a few things?
See there i go again…i keep forgetting the definition of a Narcissist.
Your little filter bubble seeks to feed the sickness not make it better.
I really enjoyed the article though I found it somewhat distressing. What are some ways that are effective in changing a belief?
The writer might be interested to see the sort of idiots that are regurgitating your article:
http://redactednews.blogspot.com/2011/07/backfire-effect.html
Check their rampant anti-semitism? They publish your article alongside the most goofy rubbish.
I just wonder if you gave them consent? And what you think about being listed amongst such dross?
I see a few people asking how we can actually change someone’s belief but not many answers there. Is there one?
As great as the article is, it failed to really answer how to change someone’s belief about something they have always known to be “fact”.. especially if their belief is holding them back and is not ultimately “good” for them.
Very insightful.
Reading your article strengthens my belief that the backfire effect doesn’t exist.
Perhaps I’m an odd one out when it’s neither side that makes me mad, it’s when people hold one side or the other and refuse to back down that makes me mad. But then again, I’m reinforcing my idea that holding one point of view is a bad thing.
Fantastic article.
The question now remains, however: Is Confirmation Bias/Backfire Effect real, or is it a psychological concept invented to undermine our convictions? And whichever of these you believe, can you be convinced otherwise?
Why do you think that question remains? I think the real question is: so it’s real – but so what? We’ve given some rather meager refinement to the perfectly banal observation that people are often enough stubborn and closed-minded and given people who imagine that they are exempt from said effects an occasion to feel self-satisfied. But what’s the point, really?
Thinking about it some more and re-reading the article, I should also add that the article was not fantastic, since while there is no reason to doubt the reality of the Backfire Effect (insofar as this is the label that has been assigned to certain empirically studied phenomena), it also seems obvious that most of the article was not really about said Effect but was rather a lot of lazy self-indulgent editorializing (armchair science) about supposed manifestations of the Effect. Thus the article was misleading with regard to its stated subject, and therefore not fantastic… unless you wanted to say it was fantastically misleading – but that would be just a tad melodramatic.
This doesn’t seem right. People who see direct evidence cannot simply ignore it, that’s crazy. The issue is probably that the evidence is more convincing to one person than another. If we come out of the mall believing that there is a brown pair of socks in our bag, because we just bought it, then we won’t continue believing the same if we open it up to find some white gym socks. We will formulate a hypothesis that we accidentally switched bags, or dropped the wrong product in, or whatever.
This “evidence” that contributes to the backfire effect is not undeniable like the white versus brown sock. It is open for debate, at least in the minds of the believers. Of course if one believes something and sees evidence against it then one is going to try to prove the evidence wrong first instead of themselves. That’s just normal. At some point, the evidence will win and those who go further to disprove the evidence are labelled by those who were swayed earlier.
Some people are asking how to change beliefs. That’s relatively easy if you have something better to change the belief to. It’s as easy as opening the bag to show them the white sock instead of the brown one. Trouble is, most people who want to change anothers’ beliefs can’t or don’t do that. They merely argue loudly. To change beliefs there are at least two ways. One is to destroy their existing schemas by starting from some axiom and lead via logic (logic they buy into) to expose the belief that is wrong. The other is peer pressure, volume of evident, authority, or other pressure to get them to change a weak schema. For the pressure method you essentially have to overcome the strength of their belief.
Did any of the studies on this effect postulate why humans have it? How might it once have been a desirable behaviour?
I would assume they would make the standard kind of evo-devo postulation that the Effect is productive of group cohesion and group cohesion is obviously desirable. That said, you seem to be begging the question by assuming that it is not desirable behaviour. Your view on this may have been skewed by Mr. McRaney’s irresponsible editorializing, but the question remains: what exactly about the actual (empirically studied) Backfire Effect constitutes something undesirable in your view?
The Backfire Effect is clearly undesirable on the surface because it is irrational and counter-factual. Some “fact” that is claimed to be “true” is being denied by someone else, and it must be the case that either the fact is wrong or the denial of the fact is wrong.
There is no resolution of these conflicting claims until we can dig into the “facts” to find out why they are considered facts, what proof there is, how certain we are, etc. And if both parties can do this, then they will eventually come to agreement about what is true. The problem is that many people don’t know how to question the validity of so-called “facts”, and they are satisfied believing what they believe regardless.
Why is this ever good for use? Good question, and I have some speculations. It doesn’t happen to all people equally, however, and it is important to understand who is more easily led astray.
But it happens so often that even McRaney, who writes so eloquently about the phenomenon, doesn’t realize when he is doing it himself. When something seems so obviously true (in your mind) and all the media are in agreement, and no one you trust is questioning it, then anyone who questions it must be crazy, or a “conspiracy theorist”, regardless how much evidence they claim to have. You don’t have to look at the evidence since you trust that someone else will do that.
I wrote more about this in my blog: http://911truthawakening.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/the-backfire-effect/
“The Backfire Effect is clearly undesirable on the surface because it is irrational and counter-factual. Some “fact” that is claimed to be “true” is being denied by someone else, and it must be the case that either the fact is wrong or the denial of the fact is wrong.”
It has not been demonstrated that the BE is either irrational or ‘counter-factual’ (the latter ascription doesn’t even make sense). The fact that people disagree about something indeed implies that at least one party is wrong, but this disagreement is not a result of the BE so that is irrelevant.
The effects that McRaney has chosen to label as part of/corollaries of the BE are, in general, no such thing. Taking just one example: his statement that you can never win an argument on the internet (a statement which also happens to be false and plain old silly).
“Counterfactual thinking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfactual_thinking)
is a term of psychology that describes the tendency people have to imagine alternatives to reality. Humans are predisposed to think about how things could have turned out differently if only…, and also to imagine what if?.”
That is a different meaning from what I intuited when I first heard it used a few years back. It sounded like a political euphemism for “false”. But this is more interesting, and something McRaney might want to add to his blog. I agree that it doesn’t make sense, but there it is.
You are correct, David, that the BE is not the cause of the disagreement, but it tends to reinforce any disagreement rather than help resolve it. That is my point. It pushes people further apart, more firmly entrenched behind their emotional defenses, rather than openly coming together to find agreement about objective observations and evidence, which is the foundation for science. It is irrational to be irrational, to reinforce irrationality, to believe that being irrational is better than being rational.
Here we are trying to come to agreement about just this one point. I agree that one can “win an argument on the internet” but it happens mostly when both parties win, not just one, because we find agreement.
You say online debates are pointless, but I changed my mind on important issues after being exposed to one side’s facts and the other side’s fail while lurking on online forums. And I’ve seen others say the same. For example, I was already convinced of the evidence for evolution thanks to a public school education and fascination with fossils, but more than one person has spoken of leaving creationism, if not evangelical Christianity itself, after plowing through the Talk.Origins archive.
As for me, I went from pro life, think of the children (though pro choice in the legal sense) to pretty vehemently pro abortion after some couples shared their experiences with acephalic pregnancies on one of the soc.* groups back in the day. I also read a book about teratology which pushed me even further into the pro abortion camp. (I could no longer see any moral argument after digging into the science of conception.) Of course, I was an atheist by then and ready to shed Catholic morality, but I wouldn’t say I was looking for an excuse (in this particular case–abortion didn’t really affect me personally). I thought I understood the issue until I dove more deeply into it and realized my understanding before had been painfully facile.
I and others have already pointed out that McRaney’s claim about online debates was false and silly. Other than that, how is this little history of your changing personal opinions relevant to the topic at hand? Do you think your story actually illustrates anything interesting about the BE? It sure doesn’t seem to.
Coming to agreement (a true win) does require that one or more of the disagreeing parties changes their opinions. So his story about his personal experience, and what he has observed and heard from others, does counter McRaney’s claim about online debates. Just because you, David, have “pointed out” your claim that McRaney’s claim is false, that doesn’t mean you are correct. Actual counter-examples are required to prove the point, though it is not hard to find counter-examples to defeat extreme arguments, like “you can never win online debates”.
I tend to agree with a more qualified claim that it is difficult to win online debates, and this is partly because of the Backfire Effect, as well as several other counter-productive human tendencies.
By the way, I think you were rather rude and disagreeable in your tone, which doesn’t help come to agreement.
Daniel,
What I said was obviously true, and obviously it was not made true by my pointing it out, as you seem to suggest. Thus your criticism is irrational.
It is further irrational for you to claim that simply coming to agreement counts as a win. That is obviously wrong. The actual point of debate is not to simply produce consensus, it’s to get to the truth. Thus AnotherHH’s personal stories about how he has changed his opinions are indeed irrelevant.
Obviously, what is obvious to you is not obvious to everyone. And obviousness does not count when doing science anyway, even if everyone agrees something is obvious.
I was not suggesting that you were claiming that merely pointing out something makes it true. …only that pointing out something is not enough, just as being obvious is not enough. So your criticism of my criticism is irrational. So there … pluububbubpt!
I was not claiming that “simply coming to agreement counts as a win”. But that claim would not be obviously wrong even if I made it. It’s more complicated than that. Finding things we disagree about should not be ignored or avoided, but not that we should create disagreements just to be disagreeable, as you seem to be doing.
The point of finding things we disagree about should be to then go further to find out why we disagree in more depth, and potentially, ideally, resolve our differences by finding out whether one of us is mistaken in our assumptions, or if there was a misunderstanding (usually the case), or other reasons. If we cannot do so, that is not a happy situation, in my opinion. If we can come to agreement, that is better than leaving things unresolved, in a state of conflict.
I would be happier if we could come to agreement about this issue, for example. Would you agree?
Actually, Daniel, the obvious always does and always will count for a great deal in science. The thing about the obvious is that it often gets ignored, simply because it is so obvious, but its role is nonetheless absolutely indispensable when doing science.
Being obvious (actually: pointing out the obvious) IS enough (relative to the context in which such pointing out occurs). But the purpose of doing this is simply to draw attention to an obvious point, not to make an argument, i.e., to substantiate the truth of that point for someone who would actually want to contest it.
Obviously coming to an agreement is a happy result of a discussion, but in a purely trivial sense, from a scientific/rational perspective. Anyone can find at least some people to agree with their views (such as those listed by AHH), but so what? – this obviously does not indicate that someone is in an epistemically happy place. The fact that people like AHH change their minds in online discussions is also not indicative of any epistemic virtue. It is not a demonstration of AHH’s (partial) mastery of the backfire effect, for example, since the BE never entailed in the first place the kinds of things which McRaney insinuated it did (such as, “it is impossible to win arguments on the internet”). Whether or not you agree with me about this is irrelevant to whether or not it is correct (although I will be happy if you do understand what I am explaining and agree with it).
Not at all
That was quite insightful. I have been introduced to this idea before so this was enjoyable as a further exploration of the topic.
I look forward to gradually ending the backfire effect within myself.
What difference would it make today if you found out tomorrow what you believed in wasn’t true? People believe what they wan’t to believe, there is no right or wrong there is only popular opinion…effect the way people feel about the facts then you shift beliefs and popular opinion and redefine what is right. What would be the proper agent? Art, science, politics, religion, phylosophy, commerce, blogging, inception? All of the above? I dunno, sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits.
If there is no right or wrong, does that mean the statement ‘there is no right or wrong’ is neither right nor wrong?
Maybe
“If there is no right or wrong, does that mean the statement ‘there is no right or wrong’ is neither right nor wrong?”
No, it means that the statement is BOTH right and wrong!
And if you dare to even question the “official” Holohoax 6,000,000!!!! gassed Chosen Ones number, prepare for the Jews to scream bloody murder against you. Even though forensic and historical evidence totally debunks their wild-eyed claims.
Site management — Would you please remove the offensive post above? Thank you very much.
Killing one human being is like killing the whole human race and one lie is enough to bring the whole credibility of the human race under question. Tolerance is what we need to teach and learn.
Just remembered an example – I was pretty much with the whole Dalai Lama ‘wonderful monk’ thing. Then someone posted this video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYEOSCIOnrs
Now I feel rather suspicious about him whenever he turns up.
Or does this backfire effect only apply to deep beliefs?
One of the major problems with the article is, it does not discriminate between the
different types of beliefs people hold. Some beliefs are “faith based” while others
depend upon information that the holder “believes” to be true, but for various reasons;
(logic, commonsense, reason or science) which I’ll call “dependent beliefs”. As a general rule, if a “dependent belief” has it’s basis debunked, the holder has little trouble
making the necessary changes/adjustments. So, I would pro-offer that this missive
describes challenges to “faith based” beliefs. Thus, if one mistakenly believes, for example, that 5 cubed is 124, having never had a reason to do the math. Then does
the math and discovers the answer is 125, they have little trouble absorbing the correction.
The problems encountered with “faith based” beliefs are pretty self explanatory.
Obwon
This of course presumes that anyone who has beliefs that are not faith based are in fact based on logic, common sense, reason, or science. But there are plenty of examples throughout history, including today, where arguments supposedly made on the latter allowed little dissent for integrating new and sometimes contradicting information based on the same factors. There are plenty of examples where one could say that people get caught up in the faith in the position itself (regardless of the science, “global warming” works this way for folks on both sides of the issue).
… I’m ready to spank someone!
you get into many online arguments dont you? haha
So, what is the best way to go about sharing a truth with someone with strong oppositional (wrong) beliefs, if you don’t want to confirm their wrong thinking even more?
Hey David:
Very much enjoying your material. Much, much success with your book.
I do have a question though. I’ve noticed you use the term “science” in much the same way that people like myself use the word Bible or God. Science as some sort of perfectly objective source of information, which arrived fully formed for our instruction, having avoided any contact with those of us normal humans who are susceptible to the backfire effect.
Aren’t “scientists,” whatever that means, also susceptible to the backfire effect?
As humans they are, but that’s why they have “peer review”. After there is sufficient
peer reviewed results to confirm a conclusion, the person who wishes to retain their
contrary beliefs, needs to formulate another theory for testing.
Obwon
Does “peer review” factor in the biases and political pressures of those doing reviews? For example, does the fact that certain global warming researchers wanted work to remove people from peer review boards because they might review and approve publishing research with results that might be considered dissent mean anything? Or is politicization of peer review valid for certain issues?
Also, separate from peer review, have you ever heard of the “file drawer” issue? If 19 studies with the same focus don’t get published because they did not have statistically significant results at the a = .05, but the 20th study gets published because it did have statistically significant results, then how much credence should really be put into the published study? Is it reasonable to be skeptical of “science” when it is known that this type of thing can happen?
:) Interesting article. I just had to smile thinking of the many times in the past ten to fifteen years that I have engaged in heated debate, almost as if my life depended on it. Countless times I learned the hard lesson: “facts” are not the ground those debate rested upon. It was something far larger, and the word “fact” comes from the latin “facere” which means, “to make up” as in “factory.” There are observations which collapse the quantum probability wave into something definite. Or what we think is definite :)
So what I’ve come to see is that there is very little in the world that is certain and provable. But, there are things that we feel about. For instance, you wrote:
“So, how about spanking? After reading all of this, do you think you are ready to know what science has to say about the issue? Here’s the skinny – psychologists are still studying the matter, but the current thinking says spanking generates compliance in children under seven if done infrequently, in private and using only the hands. Now, here’s a slight correction: other methods of behavior modification like positive reinforcement, token economies, time out and so on are also quite effective and don’t require any violence.
Reading those words, you probably had a strong emotional response. Now that you know the truth, have your opinions changed?”
My emotional response was about the sheer narrowness of the situation presented. In the beginning the question was: is it right or wrong? :) What is right and what is wrong? Nebulous. But your answer to this was what really got me, because the answer seems to be: what’s right and what’s wrong is “what generates compliance.” The “facts” and ideas you presented do not question what it is to “generate compliance” in a child, and I wonder what we’d say if you put forth the following question to your readers:
“Death penalty–right or wrong?” and then followed up with:
“Threat of death penalty generates consumer compliance in adults between the ages of 25 and 47. However, fear based advertising, when done through story-based information sharing in commercials, television programs, and films, is also quite effective, and other methods of behavior modification, such as a scarcity economy, threat of loss of personal and social status, and social isolation through rampant addictive media outlets, are also quite effective.”
:) So what are we trying to get our children to “comply” with? Is it just our beliefs of how children “should” be? How does our government believe we should be? How should we be?
Leah wrote: “In the beginning the question was: is it right or wrong?”
…But was that the question? I thought the question was: “What does science say about it?” which was then conflated with the question: “What is the truth about it?” (“Now you know the truth,” McRaney so sweetly tells us.) So I think you’re right about the “sheer narrowness of the situation presented,” but you seem to be wrong about the actual situation presented and the source of its (amusing/depressing) narrowness.
Hi David,
I see what you’re saying–the questions we might have about it were posed, and then, what does science have to say about it? The thing is, the way it came across to me was: science has something to say about all of these questions: “Is it right or wrong? Is it harmless or harmful? Is it lazy parenting or tough love? Science has an answer….”
If what was then posed is the scientific answer to any of those questions originally laid out in the article, and I think the science answers NONE of those questions, which is the point I’m trying to get at really, and it has almost nothing to do with the original point of this article (sorry, dear author! to hijack your post, but I feel compelled to make my point!)–except in the observation that we use a lot of science and a lot of data to backup assertions and find answers, rather than remaining open, flinging away “facts” and stepping back to catch a glimpse of the bigger picture, wherever we are. If we did that, we’d all be called to be present with ourselves and each other, and debates and conflict would be left where they have always been used effectively: in small, close circles of people who are trying to live together and grow, rather than on the ego cafes of the internet (myself included here).
If I were to rate all comments, this would have to be way up. Especially in the beginning and tearing down the word facts. Fear, terror, pain, behavior modification through negative feedback, or the threat of these, in any form and to any degree might be effective in short term but the repercussions reverberate sometimes for ever. This is a sideline about what was said there. Bad news need not be broadcast. This is not censorship. This is propagation of good in the world. Let us be chilled once again if we see a wound on a knee or hear about an illness and cry when we hear about death or damage or guilt. Behavior modification will not exist anymore one day because there is nothing to be modified only to be excelled and that would be behavior formation. It is finally time for all humanity to belong to one kingdom and for everyone to be the king and queen of that kingdom.
This is absurd. I only believe what is confirmed by reliable sources. At any time, I’m willing to change my belief if the source is reliable. Only ignorant people are unwilling to change their beliefs. Not everybody is as ignorant as proposed in the article.
What if those reliable sources start contradicting themselves? How about when all your reliable sources start contradicting themselves? How about when you discover that your most reliable sources have told you your biggest lies? Then what? Who are you going to trust against your opinions? Who would be more reliable than yourself? Do you prefer to be misled by your own convictions or by someone else’s lies?
“What if… What if… What if”! The answer, of course is: we’ll deal with each of those situations when they occur! Obviously they have not occurred with such debilitating frequency, that the processes of learning were as truncated, as your missive might well suggest it would be, if carried to easily imagined lengths. After all, one can always suppose a world where they are surrounded by deceitfulness with no one or thing to be trusted. But that is not a normal condition, save in an imaginary world.
As a general rule, we each eventually encounter misinformation that we’ve
held and the truth that belies it. Usually this is no world shaking/changing event. We simply either adjust or decide not to adjust, for various reasons.
Obwon
“Peer review”, isn’t simply subjective, as you appear to suppose it to be.
It’s not just a matter of some scientist sitting down and reading your paper
and thinking about it. It is a matter of being able to either repeat your
experiments and/or duplicate the means by which you arrived at your
conclusions.
Thus your analysis of ice cores will be studied, and attempts will be made to
repeat the steps, to see if the same conclusions can be arrived at.
No matter how loudly one shouts, no matter how many people are brought
to ones side, if the matter cannot be independently confirmed in science,
it remains controversial, and vice versa!
Obwon
This article is wrong and after reading it I am even more convinced of that! :) (just kidding)
seriously, though, i love to study about cognitive biases. the only thing i have a problem with: science is not as objective and free of dogma as we would like/need it to be. scientists are humans too (and the best ones aren’t dogmatic, but can you say that majority are the best? academia is full of mediocre, just like any other field). but then there’s also people who repeat and misquote scientific conclusions, but also ideologically biased scientists. after all, when so called journalists print some sensational “finding” – do they truly fully understand what they type? what are the risks of errors and exaggerations?
something that “came out of a lab after 100 years of research” is still not guaranteed to be true – either due to the fact that scientists have ideological leanings or are misquoted or maybe they’re just wrong until newer better research is done – for this is the essence of science – being wrong until you aren’t. science has been wrong 99% of the time during its history right up until previously held views were changed due to a discovery. I.e. chemistry was hugely wrong for as long as it existed UNTIL the periodic law was 1st discovered. Even still, corrections are discovered continually. Please do not confuse this – I am not saying that science “is wrong”. I am saying that our understanding of a matter is wrong for millenia until we make the necessary discovery to fully understand it. Most such discoveries are VERY recent. So we’ve been wrong roughly 99% of our history and only now tapping the 1% (this is very rough and not to scale).
I would suggest, albeit abstractly, that without personally seeing and analyzing research, experiments and conclusions to both verify observable results (because liars gonna lie) and the conclusions made (because spinners gonna spin), it is not fully 100% possible for a person to take anything purported to be as “scientific” at face value. These people would be nothing but “science thumpers” (also victims of their own confirmation bias).
And just because some technology is based on something or it is used every day, is still no proof. I.e. people falsely believe that searing a piece of meat “seals in juices”. It can be experimentally shown to be false, but it’s still the right thing to do – because it enhances flavors. So, “it works”, but the premise and explanation are wrong. Same “can be” true with some scientific theories.
I hope my observations are not trivialized by suggesting that I believe the Earth to be flat or junk like that (lest you all be guilty of the backfire bias yourselves, ha-ha). I am not a “bible thumper” and despise religious dogma as much as any other dogma. I was raised by the soviet (USSR) atheistic propaganda machine and as you would imagine I had to change deeply seated beliefs at least once. Actually, I am actively challenging and changing deeply held baseless beliefs to this day, one at a time, as I notice them.
Respectfully and undogmatically,
Reason Thumper
May I suggest that you have a faulty view of what science is about?
You imply that a scientist may write about something that’s been done
in a lab for 100 years, and still wrongly think that it’s true, because of
their ideology. I’d suggest that you google for “Scientific method” and
spend quite a bit of time reading. You’ll be very glad that you did, since
the alternative is for you to say this in company people a bit more
knowledgeable, and therefore more easily excited. The verbal flood
this missive would draw, will definitely not be a pleasant thing to behold.
Obwon
I’d suggest that you misunderstood me. I eat scientific method for breakfast. (Actually, I have it with coffee – 2 cups each morning for the past 15 years or so – no fatigue, no trouble sleeping and I don’t even drink it to “wake up” – I just love coffee).
I think that a series of articles could be done on how people are biased as soon as they suspect someone of challenging the prevailing views – instantly people assume they’re dealing with an ignoramus or a bible thumping hick. i assure you, i am none of those things.
True science and true scientists are not and should not be dogmatic. They should not be talking down from a high horse. So far only the 3rd rate lab coats that I’ve personally had the displeasure of meeting act in a “holier than thou” manner to anyone who dare doubt their view of “scientific” horizons of the universe. real scientists that i’ve met are humble (though not afraid to disagree).
You had me going there for a while, because it is quite true, the article does not discriminate between the various basis for beliefs. Thus, we can reflexively agree
that an error in math is much easier to correct by challenge, than an error in logic.
However… It does not work that way with the science of global warming! The people
on one side of the debate have data, calculations and reproducible experiments
that bear out their conclusions. While people on the other side have only “hand waving”.
Hardly anything that can be thought of as equivalent refutation. Or, do you think it’s
not possible to calculate how much more carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere, due to human activity over time? You would have to supposed that we do not have a historical record of fuel consumption and/or deforestation etc., going back to the start of the industrial age.
And that we cannot find evidence of how the carbon cycle worked in the ages before then.
But then, like I said before, science is not a matter of simply setting things forth based on ideology. Proposals that are put fourth without proof are called “conjectures”, they are to be tested, if they conform to already known science and are therefore possible. Like I said, in science, it doesn’t matter how many people hold a belief, or how strongly they hold it. None of that makes a theory true in science. Everyone once thought the world to be flat!
They held that belief widely, until circumnavigation of the globe, required the methods of the “round worlders” over those of the “flat earthers” whose doctrines had nothing to offer that was of any help to ocean voyagers. Captains got their ships from port to port, using methods that depended upon the theory that the earth was round. While “flat earthers” could not develop successful methods of navigation, based on theories that were untrue!
While you are free, of course, to think the world flat, if you wish, I would not recommend that you waste any time, trying to develop a workable navigation methodology based on that premise. But, it is precisely based on the workable methodology of global navigation, that “allow for little dissent” on the matter. No one has to force you to abandon a false notion, if the notion is false, it will eventually force you to abandon it, all by it self.
Obwon
Fact: The world is (often and on average) flat, locally, but round, globally. In any case, Obwon, you appear to think that everyone believed the world to be flat until ‘methods’ were required for circumnavigating the globe. That sounds like a minor variation on a common and quaint belief which is a common part of the dominant narrative about the onward march of scientific enlightenment – but it is simply not true, even though proof of the matter does not lie in a laboratory. And that’s the sad thing about ‘scientific enlightenment’: it often seems to go merrily hand-in-hand with historical and philosophical (and dare I say, spiritual?) ‘endarkenment.’
Now that the US has shed 50% of its manufacturing jobs, there is insufficient funds to pay for the ever growing public job sector. Which Reagan warned us about. Now the Public Sector is much larger while Admiral, Magnavox, Zenith, Bell Textron, TRW dont exist.
So NAFTA sealed our fate, and most kids dont want to get degrees in science, while Asian and Indian youth do.
All the QE1 and Stimulus wont bring back jobs unless we make sweeping reforms in education. We graduate less than 8% of students in Science, and of these minorities, many are not citizens.
Wake Up! Our lazy entitlement attitude and residual wealth caused the economic malaise.
Oh yeah, which is why, when I needed a particularly difficult piece of code, written and inserted into a website, I put out bids for the job. I got replies from Japan, India and Russia, places where a free education is offered to the public. The Mexicans and South Americans didn’t bid low enough. Americans didn’t bid at all, in spite of the “great recession”. Go figure!
Did you ever read “The Demon Haunted World” by Carl Sagan? Basically it addresses the question “Why do people believe ridiculous shit?”
I guess the real question is: did it address that question in an intelligent way, or more in the kind of superficial and misleading way in which McRaney has addressed one aspect of that question? (I’ll guess it was the latter.)
Here’s a late comment after skimming through the comments for similarities: The article does a great job of explaining the backfire effect, but misses the important part of human existence; the actions we take. Best summed up as “People do shit. They have reasons for doing shit: In that order.”
The entrenched opinions of people are applied to their ‘reasons’ for why they do the things they do, but in fact, they did things without much reason at all. As Nassim Taleb points out in “Fooled by Randomness”, the effective use of our minds is when we ‘trick’ ourselves into not doing or doing something BEFORE we think about it too much. Speed limits are my favorite example. We put up speed limit signs everywhere just to keep our brain from thinking about whether we want to speed or not. People drive according to the momentary feelings they have about the other cars or the visibility of signs and cop cars. They don’t actually think: “I’m going to drive exactly X fast today.” Whether political activities or sexual orientation, this is how humans work. It is also why education DOESN’T work as much as we believe it to (Freakonomics) and consequently, waste billions of dollars on buildings and landscaping.
P.S. Love the XKCD: it was already taped up over this computer as I read the article. I am not writing because you are wrong, but because this discussion needs to go to the next level: from thought to actions. Beliefs don’t matter: actions do. Now, on to moving the discussion of debt forgiveness to a discussion of the validity of “ownership” ;-)
A quick P.S. : Along with the predictions about technological wonders and the information age, there were millions of failed predictions “Spandex jackets for everyone, New York to Paris in 90 minutes under the ocean”, etc. The future validity of the predictions is only as good as the understanding of randomness among all predictions, not just the ones that were valid in hindsight (as you mentioned above).
My modification of the XKCD comic is “If I’m on the internet, I’m wrong.” Meanwhile, back to the ranch….
We saw this recently with “hurricane” Irene. No matter how much the truth, that this was merely a low speed rainstorm, impacted the facts…the Alarmist Disaster Meme kept coming back to find whatever small (and unpredicted) disasters there where to keep the narrative alive.
Largely due to the fact of Giuliani, “America’s Mayor”, having obtained so much free tv face time and media coverage, by exaggerating the damage potential of impending storms. Of course, his “storm of the ages” never did arrive, but that did nothing to take away the high recognition factor he’d gained by racing from sanitation garage to sanitation garage, to show off the cities preparedness in the face of the oncoming storm.
As I’ve said, at the risk of so damaging disaster/emergency preparedness warnings and instructions effectiveness, by diluting it with politicians seeking face time in the media, these matters should be left to their emergency/disaster appointees. And not be allowed to become a subtle form of political campaigning.
@Obwon “…not be allowed…” sounds like restrictions to our free speech to those who feel our free speech is more important than our safety. Did you mean to say that?
The problem with not allowing politicians to capitalize on these kinds of opportunities, is, who’s to judge when they are going to far and when they aren’t, and it would inevitably be enforced unfairly….
The “not be allowed” was simply a remonstration of the distress it causes me to see emergency needs being taken over by politicians who then endlessly (and needlessly) hog the airwaves, using the impending dangers as an excuse. Coupled with the tendency to make an event greater than it would otherwise seem to be, simply to grab more eyeballs.
I really think a much lower standard of “enforcement” would do it. Like if people tended to remark, rather strongly, when they believe that some politician is hogging the air time, saying things that his appointed emergency managers should be the ones to say!
I have no objection when the Mayor comes on, to address issues that are clearly related to the powers he holds, like which agencies duties he’s either combining or separating for greater efficiency etc., When it comes to “what to do” about this or that, it should be the place of the relevant emergency manager, sanitation chief, Police Head or other managing department, to fill in the rest of the story. Not the Mayor talking endlessly about it all.
I think that if people thought about whether the time the politician spend, giving what information, that would be enough to tip them off, that some kind of campaigning was going on. Elected officials are extremely sensitive to those kinds of appearances, IF, they know that the public harbors such concerns.
The point being, that as things now stand, if the storm or other event isn’t as dramatic as “advertised”, people will tend to lose faith in overall management of public safety. Emergency management appointed officials, have a higher degree of credibility, because they have no reason to risk “campaigning” in front of the camera.
Obwon
“Psychologists are still studying the matter, but the current thinking says…”
This is clearly far from the absolute “truth” on the matter, isn’t it, if “thinking” can be “current” and therefore change as dictated by political winds of one kind or another?
Not making a comment on spanking as much as one about accepting “science” blindly, because plenty of what’s considered science (including what gets studied or not) is biased in many ways.
Thank you!
“Scientists used to think… but now they know…”
Reading that article, I saw a well-executed expose of Reagan’s ability to fortify his believers’ hatred of blacks, although Reagan never stated that the welfare queen was black. However, for Reagan to be persuasive, the stereotype had to have predated his1976 story line.
The author’s thinly veiled support of Obama came out in the way he described the Obama birth certificate and OBL story reactions. Liberals, in the Kent State story, were described as rational thinkers. Not so the conservatives. There was just enough cherry-picking of information to reveal the author’s own confirmation bias. Being a political atheist, I believe I can detect bias on both ends of the political spectrum.
Getting to know the narcissistic leaders of the far left had me questioning the SDS college beliefs I once embraced. Today, I understand that most political “leaders” are sociopathic, greedy pathological narcissists, whether they be on the far left, like Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, or the far right, like Palin and Perry. Polarized Americans, who have yet to evolve, will disagree with me about one of those political couplings.
your line that both sides are equally bad is a Republican talking point. Read this article by an ex-Republican:
http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-operative-who-left-cult/1314907779
Narcissism and sociopathy are both phrases that need to be used very carefully. In fact, they can be labeled as labels only and there might not be such a thing as narcissism. If you consider yourself the dearest thing in the world meaning that you expect yourself to be the most beautiful human being who ever lived and achieved in the world, is it really narcissism? Is it sociopathy? or is it called having dreams? Dreams that man many from far right to far left have shared.
Then you’re saying that it might just be a mis-identification of “self worth”, which
everyone needs to some extent. Yet, in some discussions or others, ideas of
self worth can inflate out of proportion, and then be mistaken to be “the color of
the subjects entire world”. Good point.
Obwon
Having read this article, which contends that presenting logic and evidence to people demonstrating that their beliefs are wrong only leads to their clinging more intensely to those beliefs, and moreover that online arguments in general are a waste of time, I am now all the more convinced that arguing with people online is a good thing.
I ran across this page by accident while trying to find a research article I’d read earlier that found that Republicans with erroneous beliefs about past events tended to dig their feet in even harder when confronted by facts.
However, your page is better written, more relevant/expansive, and lacks the rather obvious political bias the other article had–making it far more inviting to read and applicable to Republicans, Democrats, and everyone in between (and out on the fringes).
I’ll be sending students here soon. (Hi, kids!)
Also, I’ll be buying a copy of your book. I suspect it will be one of the most interesting things I’ll have read this year.
I do hope that you also warn the poor innocent little souls that the article is interesting but generally speaking very misleading and that they should read the critical comments just as carefully as the article itself.
Actually, yes. I do actively encourage students to read comments, especially to help guide them towards weaknesses in arguments–of both the original author AND the various commentators attempting to present contradicting opinions.
This is particularly useful as I push them to discard the often superficial classical oratory debate strategies (which typically devolve into and rely heavily upon either-or logical fallacies) in favor of the more flexible and insightful Rogerian or Toulmin style arguments.
So you figure it’s either “superficial classical oratory debate strategies” or “more flexible and insightful Rogerian or Toulmin style arguments”? And you’re trying to avoid either-or fallacies? I suspect you may not be going about it in the right way. ;)
Ha ha! :) Actually, the way most students tend to use classical oratory debate strategies, it almost always ends up being superficial. (I think I’ve seen 2-3 students pull it off in the past 12 years.) Rogerian and Toulmin strategies force students to acknowledge and think about opinions they don’t believe in or value, and they push students outside their familiar comfort zones. So, no, it’s not an either-or fallacy. It’s more of a “99.5% of the time you’ll probably do X instead of Y” thing. Pardon my generalization! :)
Hmmm… Well what I wanted to suggest to you is that your dichotomy itself is unrealistic. But if you believe in it, perhaps you have good reasons for doing so (or perhaps this is rather some kind of assimilation bias at work). What do you mean by “classical oratory debate”? How is it essentially different from “the more flexible and insightful Rogerian or Toulmin style arguments”? Which strategy did McRaney employ in his (very superficial, fallacy-plagued) article?
Wow that was unusual. I just wrote an incredibly long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t show up. Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again. Anyways, just wanted to say excellent blog!
My opinion on spanking was what the science said. So, it’s nice to know science backs up common sense. Awesome, awesome article! It’s made me really think about how I view incoming information, objectivity, and will probably influence how I digest information in the future. Thank you!
The real leaders of the new world, are the ones who point us to our true selves.
Thank you good sir for your efforts with this book. It reminds me of why I am here and to keep thinking, and working to do my part.
This post really touches me on what I am. Its making me think of somethings that I really do. To be honest I am a sensitive person that really wants appreciation yet debates to a bad comment on what I am doing. As posted in this blog it clearly implies so many things to evade and to control from our own self.
Really awesome article. Even in health examination there will always be doubt on the result and take it again. I can relate to that one. :)
Anyways, informative post and makes me think of somethings that I must see and observe.
Cheers mate,
Gorge.
Echoing a previous contributer, the $64,000 question is “How do we persuade other people to change their minds, if facts don’t work?”. An article on this would be a good read, and potentially very useful.
You could definitely see your skills within the paintings you write. The sector hopes for more passionate writers such as you who are not afraid to say how they believe. Always follow your heart.
This article feels like I had sex. Thank you so very very much , Sir!
Ah yes, good old biased assimilation. When you read some BS that rubs you the right way it confirms your confused belief in said BS.
I’ll right away grasp your rss feed as I can not to find your email subscription hyperlink or e-newsletter service. Do you’ve any? Please let me understand so that I may just subscribe. Thanks.
The quote from Dan Gilbert does not strongly demonstrate the Backfire Effect, as does not show contradictory information strengthening an existing belief. It better illustrates other cognitive biases, such as Confirmation Bias or Wishful Thinking.
Article could have been shorter, the newspaper example and internet argument example just about do it.
However, I appreciate the links at the end – just like tvtropes….Oh snap!
go to http://www.infowars.com
go there and you debunk their research
you can try but you won’t be able to if you do your homework, then you will see the truth