Thanks for reading. Why do arguments change people's minds in some cases and backfire in others? Thus, these essays are of lower quality than ones written by experts. Analytical Youll understand the inner workings of the subject matter. Facts Don't Change Our Minds. Im not saying its never useful to point out an error or criticize a bad idea. (They can now count on their sidesort ofDonald Trump, who has said that, although he and his wife had their son, Barron, vaccinated, they refused to do so on the timetable recommended by pediatricians.). 2023 Cond Nast. Enjoy 3 days of full online access to 25,000+ summaries One explanation of why facts don't change our minds is the phenomenon of belief perseverance. ABOVE THE NOISE, a YouTube series from KQED, follows young journalists as they investigate real world issues that impact young people's lives. Before you can criticize an idea, you have to reference that idea. They were presented with pairs of suicide notes. If the goal is to actually change minds, then I dont believe criticizing the other side is the best approach. To get a high-quality original essay, click here. In this case, the failure was particularly impressive, since two data points would never have been enough information to generalize from. By Elizabeth Kolbert . So, basically, when hearing information, wepick a side and that, in turn, simply reinforces ourview. Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason. The first reason was that they didn't want to be ridiculed by the rest of the group from differing in opinions. Of course, news isn't fake simply because you don't agree with it. Every living being perceives the world differently and creates its own hallucination of reality. If you use logic against something, youre strengthening it.. The New Yorker's Elizabeth Kolbert reviews The Enigma of Reason by cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber, former Member (198182) in the School of Social Science: If reason is designed to generate sound judgments, then its hard to conceive of a more serious design flaw than confirmation bias. Inspiring Youll want to put into practice what youve read immediately. Plus, you can tell your family about Clears Law of Recurrence over dinner and everyone will think youre brilliant. When people would like a certain idea/concept to be true, they end up believing it to be true. Scouts, meanwhile, are like intellectual explorers, slowly trying to map the terrain with others. "Don't do that." This week on Hidden Brain, we look at how we rely on the people we trust to shape our beliefs, and why facts aren't always enough to change our minds. But no matter how many scientific studies conclude that vaccines are safe, and that theres no link between immunizations and autism, anti-vaxxers remain unmoved. That meanseven when presented with factsour opinion has already been determinedand wemay actually hold that view even more strongly to fight back against the new information. Most people at this point ran into trouble. Some students discovered that they had a genius for the task. Or merit-based pay for teachers? hide caption. One of the most famous of these was conducted, again, at Stanford. New Study Guides. When we are in the moment, we can easily forget that the goal is to connect with the other side, collaborate with them, befriend them, and integrate them into our tribe. Understanding the truth of a situation is important, but so is remaining part of a tribe. All of these are movies, and though fictitious, they would not exist as they do today if humans could not change their beliefs, because they would not feel at all realistic or relatable. (Toilets, it turns out, are more complicated than they appear.). Next, they were instructed to explain, in as much detail as they could, the impacts of implementing each one. The author of the book The Sixth Extinction, (2014) Elizabeth Kolbert, wrote an article for the New Yorker magazine in February 2017 entitled: "Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds: New Discoveries about the Human Mind Show the Limitations of Reason," (New Yorker, February 27, 2017). Hidden. One provided data in support of the deterrence argument, and the other provided data that called it into question. For this experiment, researchers rounded up a group of students who had opposing opinions about capital punishment. 9, If you want people to adopt your beliefs, you need to act more like a scout and less like a soldier. It feels good to stick to our guns even if we are wrong, they observe. In Atomic Habits, I wrote, Humans are herd animals. It makes a difference. Heres how the Dartmouth study framed it: People typically receive corrective informationwithin objective news reports pitting two sides of an argument against each other,which is significantly more ambiguous than receiving a correct answer from anomniscient source. As Julia Galef so aptly puts it: people often act like soldiers rather than scouts. We want to fit in, to bond with others, and to earn the respect and approval of our peers. Reason developed not to enable us to solve abstract, logical problems or even to help us draw conclusions from unfamiliar data; rather, it developed to resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups. Cognitive psychology and neuroscience studies have found that the exact opposite is often true when it comes to politics: People form opinions based on emotions, such as fear, contempt and anger,. But rejecting myside bias is also woven throughout society. For beginners Youll find this to be a good primer if youre a learner with little or no prior experience/knowledge. If your model of reality is wildly different from the actual world, then you struggle to take effective actions each day. The Atlantic never had to issue a redaction, because they had four independent sources who were there that could confirm Trump in fact said this. Coming from a group of academics in the nineteen-seventies, the contention that people cant think straight was shocking. Still, an essential puzzle remains: How did we come to be this way? Technically, your perception of the world is a hallucination. So while Kolbert does have a very important message to give her readers she does not give it to them in the unbiased way that it should have been presented and that the readers deserved. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right.10. The gap is too wide. They identified the real note in only ten instances. Silence is death for any idea. Visionary Youll get a glimpse of the future and what it might mean for you. In a well-run laboratory, theres no room for myside bias; the results have to be reproducible in other laboratories, by researchers who have no motive to confirm them. A helpful and/or enlightening book that stands out by at least one aspect, e.g. Arguments are like a full frontal attack on a persons identity. The Gormans dont just want to catalogue the ways we go wrong; they want to correct for them. Convincing someone to change their mind is really the process of convincing them to change their tribe. Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds. "The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man . We live in an era where we are immersed in information and opinion exchange. For lack of a better phrase, we might call this approach factually false, but socially accurate. 4 When we have to choose between the two, people often select friends and family over facts. Presented with someone elses argument, were quite adept at spotting the weaknesses. But a trick had been played: the answers presented to them as someone elses were actually their own, and vice versa. Two Harvard Professors Reveal One Reason Our Brains Love to Procrastinate : We have a tendency to care too much about our present selves and not enough about our future selves. How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Why Facts Don't Change People's Minds: Cognitive DissonanceWhy Many People Stubbornly Refuse to Change Their Minds Voice of the people: Will facts and the . A few years later, a new set of Stanford students was recruited for a related study. It suggests that often human will abandon rational reasoning in favour of their long-held beliefs, because the capacity to reason evolved not to be able to present logical reasoning behind an idea but to win an argument with others. The students were then asked to distinguish between the genuine notes and the fake ones. Cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber have written a book in answer to that question. She even helps prove this by being biased in her article herself, whether intentionally or not. Cognitive psychology and neuroscience studies have found that the exact opposite is often true when it comes to politics: People form opinions based on emotions, such as fear, contempt and anger, rather than relying on facts. By Elizabeth Kolbert February 19, 2017 In 1975, researchers at Stanford invited a group of. Once again, they were given the chance to change their responses. Julia Galef, president of the Center for Applied Rationality, says to think of an argument as a partnership. This insight not only explains why we might hold our tongue at a dinner party or look the other way when our parents say something offensive, but also reveals a better way to change the minds of others. I found this quote from Kazuki Yamada, but it is believed to have been originally from the Japanese version of Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki by Haruki Murakami. Why is human thinking so flawed, particularly if its an adaptive behavior that evolved over millennia? "Why facts don't change our minds". You have to give them somewhere to go. Nearly sixty per cent now rejected the responses that theyd earlier been satisfied with. An idea that is never spoken or written down dies with the person who conceived it. The belief that vaccines cause autism has persisted, even though the facts paint an entirely different story. Researchers have spent hundreds of hours studying how our opinions are formedand held. Each guide features chapter summaries, character analyses, important quotes, & much more! Of the many forms of faulty thinking that have been identified, confirmation bias is among the best catalogued; its the subject of entire textbooks worth of experiments. Get book recommendations, fiction, poetry, and dispatches from the world of literature in your in-box. In such cases, citizens are likely to resist or reject arguments andevidence contradicting their opinionsa view that is consistent with a wide array ofresearch. A recent example is the anti-vax leader saying drinking your urine can cure Covid, meanwhile, almost any scientist and major news program would tell you otherwise. The desire that humans have to always be right is supported by confirmation bias. If youre not interested in trying anymore and have given up on defending the facts, you can at least find some humor in it, right? When youre at Position 7, your time is better spent connecting with people who are at Positions 6 and 8, gradually pulling them in your direction. As is often the case with psychological studies, the whole setup was a put-on. The psychology behind our limitations of reason. Why you think youre right even if youre wrong by Julia Galef. For example, when you drive down the road, you do not have full access to every aspect of reality, but your perception is accurate enough that you can avoid other cars and conduct the trip safely. However, truth and accuracy are not the only things that matter to the human mind. This, they write, may be the only form of thinking that will shatter the illusion of explanatory depth and change peoples attitudes.. These short videos prompt critical thinking with middle and high school students to spark civic engagement. She changed her mind, and vaccinated her daughter. I know firsthand that confirmation bias is both an issue, but not unavoidable. It led her to Facebook groups, where other moms echoed what the midwife had said. Fiske identifies four factors that contribute to our reluctance to change our minds: 1. 6 Notable. Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason. In recent years, a small group of scholars has focussed on war-termination theory. In a study conducted in 2012, they asked people for their stance on questions like: Should there be a single-payer health-care system? Theyre saying stupid things, but they are not stupid. Those whod started out pro-capital punishment were now even more in favor of it; those whod opposed it were even more hostile. Why is human thinking so flawed, particularly if it's an adaptive behavior that evolved over millennia? She asks why we stick to our guns even after new evidence is shown to prove us wrong. They were then asked to write detailed, step-by-step explanations of how the devices work, and to rate their understanding again. Sloman and Fernbach see in this result a little candle for a dark world. Imagine, Mercier and Sperber suggest, a mouse that thinks the way we do. I am reminded of Abraham Lincolns quote, I dont like that man. A helpful and/or enlightening book, in spite of its obvious shortcomings. In the Stanford suicide note study, the students stick with what they believe even after finding out their beliefs are based on completely false information. About half the participants realized what was going on. Share a meal. This website uses cookies to provide you with a great user experience. The Stanford studies became famous. Reading a book is like slipping the seed of an idea into a persons brain and letting it grow on their own terms. We're committed to helping #nextgenleaders. You can't expect someone to change their mind if you take away their community too. In each pair, one note had been composed by a random individual, the other by a person who had subsequently taken his own life. When Kellyanne Conway coined the term alternative facts in defense of the Trump administrations view on how many people attended the inauguration, this phenomenon was likely at play. The most heated arguments often occur between people on opposite ends of the spectrum, but the most frequent learning occurs from people who are nearby. Kolbert's popular article makes a good case for the idea that if you want to change someone's mind about something, facts may not help you. Confirm our unfounded opinions with friends and 'like Humans are irrational creatures. I have already pointed out that people repeat ideas to signal they are part of the same social group. Get professional help and free up your time for more important things. 1. Things like that.". According to Psychology Today, confirmation, or myside, bias, occurs from the direct influence of desire on beliefs. "Telling me, 'Your midwife's right. Renee Klahr As youve probably guessed by now, thosewho supported capital punishment said the pro-deterrence data was highly credible, while the anti-deterrence data was not. About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise . The students in the high-score group said that they thought they had, in fact, done quite wellsignificantly better than the average studenteven though, as theyd just been told, they had zero grounds for believing this.