quotes from article:
“When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger.”...
“We also document several instances of a ‘backfire effect’ in which corrections actually increase misperceptions among the group in question.”...
The researchers sought to determine if a tipping point exists that could cause voters to abandon motivated reasoning and view facts in a more rational way.
“We show experimental evidence that such an affective tipping point does in fact exist,” they write. “… The existence of a tipping point suggests that voters are not immune to disconfirming information after all, even when initially acting as motivated reasoners.”
This tipping point is far from being identified, but it’s encouraging to think that repeated efforts to debunk misinformation, or to simply to spread the truth, may have an effect.
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_backfire_effect.php?page=all
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