Researchers discover a surprising threat to democracy: our brains

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_http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/?page\

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(http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/?page\

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In the end, truth will out. Won’t it?

Maybe not. Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a

human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of

information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our

minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006,

researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed

people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in

news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even

more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing

misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make

misinformation even stronger.

“The general idea is that it’s absolutely threatening to admit you’re

wrong,†says political scientist n Nyhan, the lead researcher on the

Michigan study. The phenomenon — known as “backfire†— is “a natural

defense

mechanism to avoid that cognitive dissonance.â€