Tonight’s interview with Andrew J. Perrin, associate professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, touches upon something many of us have been wondering while watching the U.S. healthcare debate unfold: Why do people maintain their beliefs in the face of contradicting information?

One possibility is that people are psychologically incapable of admitting that they're wrong.

To take an example from Elliot Aronson: There have been cases where DNA evidence proves

“...that a person who was convicted of rape or murder who has been spending the past 20 years in prison couldn’t have committed the crime. And yet, more often than not, prosecuting attorneys will not want to reopen the case….[because] what I think has happened is they’ve convinced themselves that they couldn’t possibly have made a mistake…. If I'm the prosecutor and I convicted this guy and … sent him to prison… and I think I’m a smart and moral person… it would be horrendous for me to believe that somebody has been languishing in prison for 20 years because I made a blunder. Therefore, I convince myself that regardless of what the DNA evidence shows, that’s the guy that did it and I’ll keep him in prison for another 20 years.”

            - NPR Interview with Elliot Aronson.

Sometimes, information isn’t enough to make someone change their mind and admit to making a mistake. In other words, we don’t maintain false beliefs solely as a result of an unbalanced information environment; rather this comes from an internal process explained by cognitive dissonance theory:  

“Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension that occurs whenever a person holds two cognitions (ideas, attitudes, beliefs, opinions) that are psychologically inconsistent, such as "Smoking is a dumb thing to do because it could kill me" and "I smoke two packs a day." Dissonance produces mental discomfort, ranging from minor pangs to deep anguish; people don't rest easy until they find a way to reduce it. In this example, the most direct way for a smoker to reduce dissonance is by quitting. But if she has tried to quit and failed, now she must reduce dissonance by convincing herself that smoking isn't really so harmful, or that smoking is worth the risk because it helps her relax or prevents her from gaining weight (and after all, obesity is a health risk, too), and so on. Most smokers manage to reduce dissonance in many such ingenious, if self-deluding, ways. 

- Elliot Aronson & Carol Tavris, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) (To continue reading the excerpt, go here - NPR)  

 

By the way, this phenomenon isn’t limited to the Birthers, Flat earthers, or 6% of Americans who believe the moon landing was staged. It affects various parts of our lives. According to Aronson (NPR), all human beings, regardless of race, culture or gender are hardwired for cognitive dissonance. “Research on child development has shown that everyone is born with innate ideas about how the world works. When growing children are taught how the world actually operates, they find ways to reconcile this contradiction between their intuition and the new scientific facts” (Science & Spirit).

Tonight, Andrew Perrin will discuss findings on a paper he co-authored on “inferred justification” and the role of media and technology in forming and maintaining false beliefs.

I hope you enjoy the interview. After watching the interview, if you have any comments about what was said, or on the topic of false beliefs, please share them by posting a comment below.