Researchers discover a surprising threat to democracy: our brains

[kpete]

How facts backfire
Researchers discover a surprising threat to democracy: our brains
By Joe Keohane
July 11, 2010


It’s one of the great assumptions underlying modern democracy that an informed citizenry is preferable to an uninformed one. “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1789. This notion, carried down through the years, underlies everything from humble political pamphlets to presidential debates to the very notion of a free press. Mankind may be crooked timber, as Kant put it, uniquely susceptible to ignorance and misinformation, but it’s an article of faith that knowledge is the best remedy. If people are furnished with the facts, they will be clearer thinkers and better citizens. If they are ignorant, facts will enlighten them. If they are mistaken, facts will set them straight.

In the end, truth will out. Won’t it?

Maybe not. Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.

This bodes ill for a democracy, because most voters — the people making decisions about how the country runs — aren’t blank slates. 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.

“The general idea is that it’s absolutely threatening to admit you’re wrong,” says political scientist Brendan Nyhan, the lead researcher on the Michigan study. The phenomenon — known as “backfire” — is “a natural defense mechanism to avoid that cognitive dissonance.”

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/

[RKP5637]

1. This makes a whole lot of sense to me, especially in trying to change RW minds. And I've

worked in companies where none could change, for example, the CEO's mind as the company went over the cliff. They just dug in...

[Speck Tater]

5. I'm sure the same applies to trying to change left-wing minds too.

When is the last time any of us changed our minds about something really fundamental to out political philosophy because of new facts?

[RKP5637]

6. Yep, I thought of that as hitting post message. Good point! n/t

[mdmc]

2. no one wants to be wrong

I find a great deal of joy when my beliefs "evolve".

[Mika]

3. Is this an American trait?

Seems like most of the rest of the world's democratic nations function on a more logical and socialist level.

:shrug:

[RKP5637]

8. What I see are middle ground, compromise and tolerance rapidly fading in the

US. I'm beginning to think it is a growing American trait and at what point does the nation become ungovernable.

[necso]

4. There's a lot more

to living intelligently (principledly) than just exposure to information.

And there's a lot more to living intelligently than just being intelligent.

[RKP5637]

9. Well said, I've known some pretty intelligent knowledgeable people that were

basically sociopaths.

[Liberal_in_LA]

7. I've seen this in action. yep.

[roxiejules]

10. The bigger picture is fear & we are surrounded by it...

From the article:

In other words, if you feel good about yourself, you’ll listen — and if you feel insecure or threatened, you won’t. This would also explain why
demagogues benefit from keeping people agitated. The more threatened people feel, the less likely they are to listen to dissenting opinions, and the more easily controlled they are.