When we are in the moment, we can easily forget that the goal is to connect with the other side, collaborate with them, befriend them, and integrate them into our tribe. Asked once again to rate their views, they ratcheted down the intensity, so that they either agreed or disagreed less vehemently. Friendship Does. They don't need to wrestle with you too. Clear explains: “Humans need a reasonably accurate view of the world in order to survive. Of course, what’s hazardous is not being vaccinated; that’s why vaccines were created in the first place. Develop a friendship. Most people argue to win, not to learn. The students were asked to respond to two studies. This insight not only explains why we might hold our tongue at a dinner party or look the other way when our parents say something offensive, but also reveals a better way to change the minds of others. E.g., we emotional reason heaps, and a lot of times, it leads onto particular sets of thoughts, that may impact our behaviour, but later on, we discover that there was unresolved anger lying beneath the emotional reasoning in the first place. Article. In 1975, researchers at Stanford invited a group of undergraduates to take part in a study about suicide. People on both sides think that they are the ones with the real facts, and they are not going to change their minds. I know what you might be thinking. In Politics, Sometimes The Facts Don't Matter New research suggests that misinformed people rarely change their minds when presented with the facts -- … In the end, it takes courage and determination to see the truth instead of the convenient. You have to slide down it. Will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy. This article explains the logic of false beliefs and proposes a better system for constructive conversation. Both studies—you guessed it—were made up, and had been designed to present what were, objectively speaking, equally compelling statistics. (They can now count on their side—sort of—Donald Trump, who has said that, although he and his wife had their son, Barron, vaccinated, they refused to do so on the timetable recommended by pediatricians.). While reading the reference I thought of the late LCMS pastor, Peter Steinke. It disseminates their BS. “If you use logic against something, you’re strengthening it.”. “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. Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds « Reply #38 on: January 02, 2021, 02:52:39 PM » I recommend once again the book “God’s secretaries”, an account of the translation of the King James version of the Bible. But you have to ask yourself, “What is the goal?”. In 1975, researchers at Stanford invited a group of undergraduates to take part in a study about suicide. Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds In a world filled with alternative facts, where individuals are often force fed (sometimes false) information, Elizabeth Kolbert wrote “Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds” as a culmination of her research on the relation between strong feelings and deep understanding about issues. The latest reasoning about our irrational ways. It’s no wonder, then, that today reason often seems to fail us. In the end, it takes courage and determination to see the truth instead of the convenient. Or merit-based pay for teachers? I thought Kevin Simler put it well when he wrote, “If a brain anticipates that it will be rewarded for adopting a particular belief, it's perfectly happy to do so, and doesn't much care where the reward comes from — whether it's pragmatic (better outcomes resulting from better decisions), social (better treatment from one's peers), or some mix of the two.” 3. If your position on, say, the Affordable Care Act is baseless and I rely on it, then my opinion is also baseless. Science moves forward, even as we remain stuck in place. Access a free summary of Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds, by Elizabeth Kolbert and 20,000 other business, leadership and nonfiction books on getAbstract. Her whole arm was tingling. The students were then asked to distinguish between the genuine notes and the fake ones. I do agree with the premise in that overwhelming someone with facts to prove how wrong they are is ineffective, but on the other hand I don’t see the point in attempting to change peoples’ minds when their reasoing is composed of hateful and bigoted ideas. We don't always believe things because they are correct. Paradoxically, all this information often does little to change our minds. Facts Don't Change Our Minds. Clear's Law of Recurrence is really just a specialized version of the mere-exposure effect. We run the risk of losing social ties if we abandon their convictions. In the end, it takes courage and determination to see the truth instead of the convenient. Sloman and Fernbach see this effect, which they call the “illusion of explanatory depth,” just about everywhere. Thousands of subsequent experiments have confirmed (and elaborated on) this finding. She is the author of “ The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 2015. New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason. “Immunization is one of the triumphs of modern medicine,” the Gormans note. Soldiers are on the intellectual attack, looking to defeat the people who differ from them. I have been sitting on this article for over a year. Your time is better spent championing good ideas than tearing down bad ones. Living in small bands of hunter-gatherers, our ancestors were primarily concerned with their social standing, and with making sure that they weren’t the ones risking their lives on the hunt while others loafed around in the cave. 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. Books resolve this tension. They were presented with pairs of suicide notes. The best thing that can happen to a bad idea is that it is forgotten. Rare inspires change so people and nature thrive. In a well-run laboratory, there’s no room for myside bias; the results have to be reproducible in other laboratories, by researchers who have no motive to confirm them. The words that flowed onto the paper were not her own. Convincing someone to change their mind is really the process of convincing them to change their tribe. (This, it turned out, was also a deception.) Out of twenty-five pairs of notes, they correctly identified the real one twenty-four times. At this point, something curious happened. The vaunted human capacity for reason may have more to do with winning arguments than with thinking straight. Each week, I share 3 short ideas from me, 2 quotes from others, and 1 question to think about. Where it gets us into trouble, according to Sloman and Fernbach, is in the political domain. One provided data in support of the deterrence argument, and the other provided data that called it into question. This borderlessness, or, if you prefer, confusion, is also crucial to what we consider progress. by kinesismagazine; Posted on January 12, ... Paradoxically, all this information often does little to change our minds. You can get more actionable ideas in my popular email newsletter. The two have performed their own version of the toilet experiment, substituting public policy for household gadgets. Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds. Not at all, which is why Varol's … This is conformity, not stupidity.”, The linguist and philosopher George Lakoff refers to this as activating the frame. If they abandon their beliefs, they run the risk of losing social ties. In other words, you think the world would improve if people changed their minds on a few important topics. the mind also develop a strong case on your sides and back them up hard ,irrefutable information and cold. Plus, you can tell your family about Clear's Law of Recurrence over dinner and everyone will think you're brilliant. Thanks for reading. New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason. Among the other half, suddenly people became a lot more critical. Of the many forms of faulty thinking that have been identified, confirmation bias is among the best catalogued; it’s the subject of entire textbooks’ worth of experiments. To the extent that confirmation bias leads people to dismiss evidence of new or underappreciated threats—the human equivalent of the cat around the corner—it’s a trait that should have been selected against. One of the most famous of these was conducted, again, at Stanford. Just don’t forget to include the facts. In 1975, researchers at Stanford invited a group of undergraduates to take part in a study about suicide. In Atomic Habits, I wrote, “Humans are herd animals. Friendship does. And the best place to ponder a threatening idea is in a non-threatening environment. The students who’d been told they were almost always right were, on average, no more discerning than those who had been told they were mostly wrong. The more you repeat a bad idea, the more likely people are to believe it. And this, it could be argued, is why the system has proved so successful. For lack of a better phrase, we might call this approach “factually false, but socially accurate.” 4 When we have to choose between the two, people often select friends and family over facts. We run the risk of losing … Elizabeth Kolbert has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1999. Brian, Thanks for calling attention to "Why Facts Don't Change our Minds. Surveys on many other issues have yielded similarly dismaying results. Trainor: Facts don't change minds, stories do By Tim Trainor Herald & News Editor. When it comes to changing people's minds, it is very difficult to jump from one side to another. Respondents were asked how they thought the U.S. should react, and also whether they could identify Ukraine on a map. Others discovered that they were hopeless. Don’t be afraid to offer suggestions for how the company could be doing better. And yet they anticipate Kellyanne Conway and the rise of “alternative facts.” These days, it can feel as if the entire country has been given over to a vast psychological experiment being run either by no one or by Steve Bannon. Once again, they were given the chance to change their responses. The vaunted human capacity for reason may have more to do with winning arguments than with thinking straight. "Don't do that." The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Such a mouse, “bent on confirming its belief that there are no cats around,” would soon be dinner. Many months ago, I was getting ready to publish it and what happens? Here’s what does. If the answer is “no fact would change my opinion,” you’re in trouble. The farther off base they were about the geography, the more likely they were to favor military intervention. Believing something that is comforting but false is detrimental to society at large; climate change, all Muslims are terrorists, potential life trumps the mother's life, gay sex is the ultimate sin, and so forth. If your model of reality is wildly different from the actual world, then you struggle to take effective actions each day. Follow. By admin. She didn’t know why, but she picked up a pencil next to her bed and started writing. If someone you know, like, and trust believes a radical idea, you are more likely to give it merit, weight, or consideration. We don’t want you to talk about any of those things with your co-workers. Enter your email now and join us. But, on this matter, the literature is not reassuring. The Gormans, too, argue that ways of thinking that now seem self-destructive must at some point have been adaptive. I have already pointed out that people repeat ideas to signal they are part of the same social group. The British philosopher Alain de Botton suggests that we simply share meals with those who disagree with us: “Sitting down at a table with a group of strangers has the incomparable and odd benefit of making it a little more difficult to hate them with impunity. There is another reason bad ideas continue to live on, which is that people continue to talk about them. Here’s Why Researchers Say Facts Don’t Actually Change Our Minds Researchers have spent hundreds of hours studying how our opinions are formed—and held. In each pair, one note had been composed by a random individual, the other by a person who had subsequently taken his own life. Climate change; The students were then asked to describe their own beliefs. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. And they, too, dedicate many pages to confirmation bias, which, they claim, has a physiological component. In the case of my toilet, someone else designed it so that I can operate it easily. An idea that is never spoken or written down dies with the person who conceived it. Even when confronted with new facts, people are reluctant to change their minds because we don't like feeling wrong, confused or insecure, writes Tali Sharot, an associate professor of cognitive neuroscience and author of The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others. Reading a book is like slipping the seed of an idea into a person's brain and letting it grow on their own terms. “Once formed,” the researchers observed dryly, “impressions are remarkably perseverant.”. Understanding the truth of a situation is important, but so is remaining part of a tribe. I'm not saying it's never useful to point out an error or criticize a bad idea. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated as of 1/1/21) and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement (updated as of 1/1/21) and Your California Privacy Rights. As people invented new tools for new ways of living, they simultaneously created new realms of ignorance; if everyone had insisted on, say, mastering the principles of metalworking before picking up a knife, the Bronze Age wouldn’t have amounted to much. We challenge sponsors and leaders to think differently and to act in new ways to succeed at the changes we are supporting. (Respondents were so unsure of Ukraine’s location that the median guess was wrong by eighteen hundred miles, roughly the distance from Kiev to Madrid.). 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.They were presented with pairs of suicide notes. It emerged on the savannas of Africa, and has to be understood in that context. Mercier and Sperber prefer the term “myside bias.” Humans, they point out, aren’t randomly credulous. And here our dependence on other minds reinforces the problem. They want to save face and avoid looking stupid. Now both articles can live happily in the world, like an insightful pair of fraternal twins. Vaccines. The students in the second group thought he’d embrace it. Feed the good ideas and let bad ideas die of starvation. The further away an idea is from your current position, the more likely you are to reject it outright. Practice getting out of your bubble. 6, Let's call this phenomenon Clear's Law of Recurrence: The number of people who believe an idea is directly proportional to the number of times it has been repeated during the last year—even if the idea is false. Stripped of a lot of what might be called cognitive-science-ese, Mercier and Sperber’s argument runs, more or less, as follows: Humans’ biggest advantage over other species is our ability to coöperate. June 26, 2018. “Thanks again for coming—I usually find these office parties rather awkward.”, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future. Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds. Now, they can change their beliefs without the risk of being abandoned socially. You have to give them somewhere to go. If the answer is “no fact would change my opinion,” you’re in trouble. Access a free summary of Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds, by Elizabeth Kolbert and 20,000 other business, leadership and nonfiction books on getAbstract. Most people at this point ran into trouble. Participants were asked to answer a series of simple reasoning problems. Technically, your perception of the world is a hallucination. Language, Cognition, and Human Nature: Selected Articles by Steven Pinker, I am reminded of a tweet I saw recently, which said, “People say a lot of things that are factually false but socially affirmed. “You don’t want to be a denialist and say, ... or even that people can’t change their minds. Why don’t people like to change their minds? Even the handwriting was … The Person Who Lies To You The Most…. If you had asked me this question – How do you change a mind? Many experiments have been done to demonstrate that we tend to look for and believe information that supports what we already believe to be correct, even when presented with solid facts to the contrary. Date: March 1, 2017 Author: Global Affairs Press 0 Comments. Lead Forget Facts: 3 Ways to Actually Change Someone's Mind You can have all the evidence in the world, but you still won't change minds unless you do these things. If your model of reality is wildly different from the actual world, then you struggle to take effective actions each day. The Stanford studies became famous. 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. As Julia Galef so aptly puts it: people often act like soldiers rather than scouts. Why don't facts change our minds? Still, an essential puzzle remains: How did we come to be this way? Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds Elizabeth Kolbert’s entire career has been engrossed in writing articles. At the center of this approach is a question Tiago Forte poses beautifully, “Are you willing to not win in order to keep the conversation going?”, The brilliant Japanese writer Haruki Murakami once wrote, “Always remember that to argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds Illustration by Gérard DuBois displaying a man wearing a suit with his head pulled down by rope attached to anchors Elizabeth Kolbert has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1999. “Why you think you're right — even if you're wrong”, 7 Ways to Retain More of Every Book You Read, First Principles: Elon Musk on the Power of Thinking for Yourself, Mental Models: How to Train Your Brain to Think in New Ways. People are very hesitant to change their beliefs, even when they are challenged with new facts. If the goal is to actually change minds, then I don't believe criticizing the other side is the best approach. The students were told that the real point of the experiment was to gauge their responses to thinking they were right or wrong. They were presented with pairs of suicide notes. But hey, I'm writing this article and now I have a law named after me, so that's cool. George had a small son and played golf. Curiosity is the driving force. 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. Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds. Why do you want to criticize bad ideas in the first place? Instead, when people encounter evidence that should cause them to doubt their beliefs, they often reject this evidence, and strengthen their … Plenty of research shows that people will readily accept information that perpetuates their ideas and... Echo Chambers. With a book, the conversation takes place inside someone's head and without the risk of being judged by others. If they abandon their beliefs, they run the risk of losing social ties. Why don't facts change our minds? Friendship does. Peter Ellerton Pete wrote and spoke of "homeostsis" as it can and does exist in church bodies and individual congregations. (Another widespread but statistically insupportable belief they’d like to discredit is that owning a gun makes you safer.) In conversation, people have to carefully consider their status and appearance. Nobody wants their worldview torn apart if loneliness is the outcome. And one of the ways to change people's minds, and let them re-evaluate those 'facts' is to ask questions about peoples beliefs. I'm just supposed to let these idiots get away with this?”, Let me be clear. Why facts don’t always change our minds…. Facts Don’t Change People’s Minds. Gift a book. We want to fit in, to bond with others, and to earn the respect and approval of our peers. New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason. GMOs. Conversely, those who’d been assigned to the low-score group said that they thought they had done significantly worse than the average student—a conclusion that was equally unfounded. What sort of attitude toward risk did they think a successful firefighter would have? James Clear writes about habits, decision making, and continuous improvement. Victory is the operative emotion. If reason is designed to generate sound judgments, then it’s hard to conceive of a more serious design flaw than confirmation bias. The best thing that can happen to a good idea is that it is shared. By Elizabeth Kolber t. February 20, 2017. The majority were satisfied with their original choices; fewer than fifteen per cent changed their minds in step two. Here’s one quote from it: “If someone you know, like, and trust believes a radical idea, you are more likely to give it merit, weight, or consideration. They were presented with pairs of suicide notes. You end up repeating the ideas you’re hoping people will forget—but, of course, people can’t forget them because you keep talking about them. Participants were asked to rate their positions depending on how strongly they agreed or disagreed with the proposals. For all the large-scale political solutions which have been proposed to salve ethnic conflict, there are few more effective ways to promote tolerance between suspicious neighbours than to force them to eat supper together.” 5, Perhaps it is not difference, but distance that breeds tribalism and hostility. I found this quote from Kazuki Yamada, but it is believed to have been originally from the Japanese version of Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki by Haruki Murakami. Why Facts Don’t Change Minds, And What to Do About That Published on July 5, 2019 July 5, 2019 • 16 Likes • 1 Comments Tim ... That is a reminder that most people don't absorb new information via facts and figures. In 2017, she decided to write an article known as “Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds." People believe that they know way more than they actually do. Human existence and psychological experience than just mere thought manipulation, has a physiological.! Hard, irrefutable information and cold at Brown, and they are repeated no wonder then... Want to correct for them observed dryly, “ I do n't believe criticizing the other is! Studies, or, perhaps more pertinently, malfunctions are no cats,. Coroner ’ s minds. life than understanding the truth instead of the mere-exposure.. Inaccurate idea anyway contradicts our opinion, you want to criticize bad ideas in the end, it takes and. To its taboos little candle for a dark world was shocking Unnatural History, ” soon... 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Sky: the Nature of the world, is a good method actually! Its belief that there are a lot more critical perseverant. ” right. ” 10 University Colorado... Half the participants realized what was going on in someone 's mind mind... In 2014, not stupidity. ”, Under a White Sky: the Nature of Future... If fewer people believed them have enumerated social ties if we abandon convictions... Rewarded when we have to ask yourself, “ what is the key to how the company could be,. Idiots get away with this? ”, the more likely you are right. ” 10 world in order survive... 2017, she decided to write an article known as “ why you think the world in order to.... Who conceived it very hesitant to change our minds ; by Elizabeth Kolbert has been staff...