I'm trying to find this study, recently done that showed people even when faced with facts tend to become even more entrenched in their viewpoint instead of reconsidering their viewpoint.
I'm certain all of us are affected by this, I wonder what the spectrum would be however.. Always good to step back and rethink why we think the way we do and challenge it.
That's why I love CP, we have people here who are always challenging what I think and I think that's at least something, even if studies show our stubbornness to be a huge obstacle in our belief systems.
Quote:
In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds... They already have beliefs, and a set of facts lodged in their minds. The problem is that sometimes the things they think they know are objectively, provably false. And in the presence of the correct information, such people react very, very differently than the merely uninformed. Instead of changing their minds to reflect the correct information, they can entrench themselves even deeper.
A 2006 study showed that sophisticated thinkers were even less open to new information than less sophisticated types. These people may be factually right about 90 percent of things, but their confidence makes it nearly impossible to correct the 10 percent on which they’re totally wrong.
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