Note: I wrote this post on May 15, 2020, but forgot to share it. In light of everything that has happened in the past few weeks, I think it is still timely.
We, humans, take for granted our ability to reason - that is to make sense of the world in a logical fashion, to easily separate fact from fiction - and erroneously believe that we are correct in our beliefs most of the time. Cognitive scientists and evolutionary biologists suspect this ability to accept false beliefs begins around the age of 4 to 5 and helped our species survive.
Since we are hardwired to look for patterns that match with the mental maps that formed during our own development, we often seek out information that appears to reinforce our pre-existing beliefs about how things work. This is known as confirmation bias (*NOTE: there are many other kinds of bias).
More than four decades ago, researchers at Stanford found that even when people were told they were intentionally misled about their ability to assess information, those people's initial impressions about how accurate they were at the task remained. In other words, if the research subjects thought they were better than average at a task, they continued to believe that even when provided evidence that they were not.
This is why in large part giving someone with an erroneous false belief the evidence necessary to reject their thinking, they often don't change their minds. And this is why conspiracy theories are also hugely popular.
So how can you help convince someone to reexamine strongly held beliefs? The first thing to do is to identify the other person's major concerns and shared values. People are more likely to consider what you have to say if they believe you have some common ground.
It's important to be aware of these brain tendencies because if we aren't and we act irrationally, we can make mistakes that have significant, long-lasting impacts on society. Like rushing to pull NIH funding from EcoHealth Alliance, a leader in surveillance of zoonotic diseases including coronaviruses in the middle of a global pandemic because of a conspiracy narrative...
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