Article Analysis of Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds by Elizabeth Kolbert Every person in the world has some kind of bias. False beliefs can be useful in a social sense even if they are not useful in a factual sense. Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds. Julia Galef, president of the Center for Applied Rationality, says to think of an argument as a partnership. In many circumstances, social connection is actually more helpful to your daily life than understanding the truth of a particular fact or idea. Changing our mind requires us, at some level, to concede we once held the "wrong" position on something. Convincing someone to change their mind is really the process of convincing them to change their tribe. In 1975, researchers at Stanford invited a group of undergraduates to take part in a study about suicide. Mercier, who works at a French research institute in Lyon, and Sperber, now based at the Central European University, in Budapest, point out that reason is an evolved trait, like bipedalism or three-color vision. The word kind originated from the word kin. When you are kind to someone it means you are treating them like family. Well structured Youll find this to be particularly well organized to support its reception or application. The fact that both we and it survive, Mercier and Sperber argue, proves that it must have some adaptive function, and that function, they maintain, is related to our hypersociability. Mercier and Sperber prefer the term myside bias. Humans, they point out, arent randomly credulous. getAbstract offers a free trial to qualifying organizations that want to empower their workforce with curated expert knowledge. The opposite was true for those who opposed capital punishment. A helpful and/or enlightening book that is extremely well rounded, has many strengths and no shortcomings worth mentioning. At this point, something curious happened. You can also follow us on Twitter @hiddenbrain. You can't expect someone to change their mind if you take away their community too. In an interview with NPR, one cognitive neuroscientist said, for better or for worse, it may be emotions and not facts that have the power to change our minds. Instead of just arguing with family and friends, they went to work. The students in the second group thought hed embrace 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. When I talk to Tom and he decides he agrees with me, his opinion is also baseless, but now that the three of us concur we feel that much more smug about our views. Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker. In the weeks before John Wayne Gacys scheduled execution, he was far from reconciled to his fate. But I would say most of us have a reasonably accurate model of the actual physical reality of the universe. Or merit-based pay for teachers? Among the many, many issues our forebears didn't worry about were the deterrent effects of capital punishment and the ideal attributes of a firefighter. 1. The Stanford studies became famous. In 2012, as a new mom, Maranda Dynda heard a story from her midwife that she couldn't get out of her head. Inspiring Youll want to put into practice what youve read immediately. 9 Superb. "A man with a conviction is a hard man to change," Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schacter wrote in their book When Prophecy Fails. We want to fit in, to bond with others, and to earn the respect and approval of our peers. 8 Very good. Any deadline. As a journalist,I see it pretty much every day. Let's Begin. Next thing you know youre firing off inflammatory posts to soon-to-be-former friends. 08540 In each pair, one note had been composed by a random individual, the other by a person who had subsequently taken his own life. In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as "suckers" for getting killed. Participants were asked to rate their positions depending on how strongly they agreed or disagreed with the proposals. They begin their book, The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone (Riverhead), with a look at toilets. In the case of my toilet, someone else designed it so that I can operate it easily. Select the sections that are relevant to you. Books resolve this tension. Visionary Youll get a glimpse of the future and what it might mean for you. The students whod received the first packet thought that he would avoid it. The students who had originally supported capital punishment rated the pro-deterrence data highly credible and the anti-deterrence data unconvincing; the students whod originally opposed capital punishment did the reverse. *getAbstract is summarizing much more than books. We help you to meet your learning objectives. If your model of reality is wildly different from the actual world, then you struggle to take effective actions each day. Join hosts Myles Bess and Shirin Ghaffary for new episodes published every Wednesday on . When it comes to changing peoples minds, it is very difficult to jump from one side to another. In a study conducted in 2012, they asked people for their stance on questions like: Should there be a single-payer health-care system? The more you repeat a bad idea, the more likely people are to believe it. Eventually, she did more research and realized that the purported link between vaccines and autism wasn't real. Institute for Advanced Study For any individual, freeloading is always the best course of action. 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. "Don't do that.". 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. There is another reason bad ideas continue to live on, which is that people continue to talk about them. The vaunted human capacity for reason may have more to do with winning arguments than with thinking straight. USA. Understanding the truth of a situation is important, but so is remaining part of a tribe. You end up repeating the ideas youre hoping people will forgetbut, of course, people cant forget them because you keep talking about them. In Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore the Facts That Will Save Us (Oxford), Jack Gorman, a psychiatrist, and his daughter, Sara Gorman, a public-health specialist, probe the gap between what science tells us and what we tell ourselves. How can we avoidlosing ourminds when trying to talk facts? In the other version, Frank also chose the safest option, but he was a lousy firefighter whod been put on report by his supervisors several times. Clear argues that bad ideas continue to live because many people tend to talk about them thus spreading them further. But if someone wildly different than you proposes the same radical idea, well, its easy to dismiss them as a crackpot. The New Yorker publishes an article under the exact same title one week before and it goes on to become their most popular article of the week. This is how a community of knowledge can become dangerous, Sloman and Fernbach observe. Any subject. Rational agents would be able to think their way to a solution. Elizabeth Kolbert New Yorker Feb 2017 10 min. For experts Youll get the higher-level knowledge/instructions you need as an expert. New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason. Summary In the mid-1970s, Stanford University began a research project that revealed the limits to human rationality; clipboard-wielding graduate students have been eroding humanity's faith in its own judgment ever since. They wanted to fit in so went along with the majority group, typical of normative social influence. How an unemployed blogger confirmed that Syria had used chemical weapons. To get a high-quality original essay, click here. If you want to beat procrastination and make better long-term choices, then you have to find a way to make your present self act in the best interest of your future self. Arguments are like a full frontal attack on a persons identity. "And they were just practically bombarding me with information," says Maranda. So she did. Their concern is with those persistent beliefs which are not just demonstrably false but also potentially deadly, like the conviction that vaccines are hazardous. "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. I thought Kevin Simler put it well when he wrote, If a brain anticipates that it will be rewarded for adopting a particular belief, its perfectly happy to do so, and doesnt much care where the reward comes from whether its pragmatic (better outcomes resulting from better decisions), social (better treatment from ones peers), or some mix of the two. 3. 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. Changing our mind about a product or a political candidate can be undesirable because it signals to others that "I was wrong" about that candidate or product. We're committed to helping #nextgenleaders. Some students discovered that they had a genius for the task. By Elizabeth Kolbert. It disseminates their BS. Science reveals this isnt the case. 3. You already agree with them in most areas of life. Kolbert tries to show us that we must think about our own biases and uses her rhetoric to show us that we must be more open-minded, cautious, and conscious while taking in and processing information to avoid confirmation bias, but how well does Kolbert do in keeping her own biases about this issue at bay throughout her article? What happened? Begin typing to search for a section of this site. For beginners Youll find this to be a good primer if youre a learner with little or no prior experience/knowledge. Thanks for reading. The backfire effect has been observed in various scenarios, such as in the case of people supporting a political candidate . In an interview with NPR, one cognitive neuroscientist said, for better or for worse, it may be emotions and not facts that have the power to change our minds. Things like that.". These misperceptions are bad for public policy and social health. Why is human thinking so flawed, particularly if its an adaptive behavior that evolved over millennia? You cant know what you dont know. I would argue that while arguing against this and trying to prove to the readers how bad confirmation bias is, Kolbert succumbs to it in her article. In this case, the failure was particularly impressive, since two data points would never have been enough information to generalize from. Among the other half, suddenly people became a lot more critical. Those whod started out pro-capital punishment were now even more in favor of it; those whod opposed it were even more hostile. This tendency to embrace information that supports a point of view and reject what does not is known as the confirmation bias. There are entire textbooksand many studies on this topic if youre inclined to read them, but one study from Stanford in 1979 explains it quite well. And the best place to ponder a threatening idea is in a non-threatening environment. Found a perfect sample but need a unique one? Maranda trusted them. You have to give them somewhere to go. They were then asked to write detailed, step-by-step explanations of how the devices work, and to rate their understanding again. Its easier to be open-minded when you arent feeling defensive. Hidden. Out of twenty-five pairs of notes, they correctly identified the real one twenty-four times. 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. When it comes to the issue of why facts don't change our minds, one of the key reasons has to do with confirmation bias. Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds. It's because they believe something that you don't believe. An idea that is never spoken or written down dies with the person who conceived it. In 1975, researchers at Stanford invited a group of undergraduates to take part in a study about suicide. People have a tendency to base their choices on their feelings rather than the information presented to them. Friendship Does. They began studying the backfire effect, which they define as a phenomenon by which corrections actually increase misperceptions among the group in question, if those corrections contradict their views. Can Carbon-Dioxide Removal Save the World. What is the main idea or point of the article? Respondents were asked how they thought the U.S. should react, and also whether they could identify Ukraine on a map. Analytical Youll understand the inner workings of the subject matter. Because, hey, if you cant beat it, you might as well laugh at it. Not whether or not it "feels" true or not to you. In other words, you think the world would improve if people changed their minds on a few important topics. 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. These groups thrive on confirmation bias and help prove the argument that Kolbert is making, that something needs to change. What HBOs Chernobyl got right, and what it got terribly wrong. The what makes a successful firefighter study and capital punishment study have the same results, one even left the participants feeling stronger about their beliefs than before. A helpful and/or enlightening book that has a substantial number of outstanding qualities without excelling across the board, e.g. The students were provided with fake studies for both sides of the argument. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. I know what you might be thinking. Where it gets us into trouble, according to Sloman and Fernbach, is in the political domain. Fiske identifies four factors that contribute to our reluctance to change our minds: 1. Thanks again for comingI usually find these office parties rather awkward., Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future. Each week, I share 3 short ideas from me, 2 quotes from others, and 1 question to think about. According to one version of the packet, Frank was a successful firefighter who, on the test, almost always went with the safest option. Here is how to lower the temperature. In a study conducted at Yale, graduate students were asked to rate their understanding of everyday devices, including toilets, zippers, and cylinder locks. (Respondents were so unsure of Ukraines location that the median guess was wrong by eighteen hundred miles, roughly the distance from Kiev to Madrid.). I have already pointed out that people repeat ideas to signal they are part of the same social group. The challenge that remains, they write toward the end of their book, is to figure out how to address the tendencies that lead to false scientific belief., The Enigma of Reason, The Knowledge Illusion, and Denying to the Grave were all written before the November election. Surprised? Its easy to spend your energy labeling people rather than working with them. What might be an alternative way to explain her conclusions? However, truth and accuracy are not the only things that matter to the human mind. The economist J.K. Galbraith once wrote, "Faced with a choice between changing one's mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy with the proof.". Some students believed it deterred crime, while others said it had no effect. Research shows that we are internally rewarded when we can influence others with our ideas and engage in debate. While the rating tells you how good a book is according to our two core criteria, it says nothing about its particular defining features. Confirm our unfounded opinions with friends and 'like This shows that facts cannot change people's mind about information that is factually false but socially accurate. Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds. February 27, 2017 "Information Clearing House" - "New Yorker" - In 1975, researchers at Stanford invited a group of undergraduates to take part in a study about suicide. Nor did they have to contend with fabricated studies, or fake news, or Twitter. Humans need a reasonably accurate view of the world in order to survive. []. Scientific Youll get facts and figures grounded in scientific research. A new era of strength competitions is testing the limits of the human body. Clears Law of Recurrence is really just a specialized version of the mere-exposure effect. 7 Good. Isnt it amazing how when someone is wrong and you tell them the factual, sometimes scientific, truth, they quickly admit they were wrong? Participants were asked to answer a series of simple reasoning problems. The midwife told her that years earlier, something bad had happened after she vaccinated her son. Whatever we select for our library has to excel in one or the other of these two core criteria: Enlightening Youll learn things that will inform and improve your decisions.