Question

"Why won't they admit, they are wrong?" and other skeptics Mysteries.

4 Guidelines; (1)Ask questions, be willing to wonder. (2)Define your terms. (3)Examine the evidence. (4)Analyze assumptions and biases.

One of the greatest challenges for scientist and educators is how to persuade people to give up beliefs they hold dear when the evidence clearly indicates that they should. Why aren't most people grateful for the data? It's easy to make fun of others who won't give up ideas or practices that scientific research has shown to be demonstrably wrong --therapeutic touch, alien abduction, the Rorschach Inkblot Test --or beliefs in haunted houses and psychic detective skills that the skeptical inquirer keeps exposing as frauds or delusions. IT's harder to see that the mechanism that keeps all these people from admitting they are wrong afflicts us too --all of us, even skeptics. The motivational mechanism that underlines the reluctance to be wrong, to change our minds, to admit serious mistakes, and to be unwilling to accept unwelcome findings is cognitive dissonance was invented fifty years ago by Leon Frestinger, who defined "dissonance" as a state of tension that occurs whenever a person holds two cognitions 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, a state that is as unpleasant as extreme hunger, and people don’t rest easy until they find a way to reduce it. Smokers can reduce dissonance either by quitting or by convincing themselves that smoking is not really so harmful. Hey, in fact, it’s beneficial, since it keep me from gaining weight. The Congressmen and ministers who preach that homosexuality is a sin and a choice reduce dissonance, when caught with male lovers, by saying, I am not "happy" –I was just under stress.

It is important to honesty express your views and thinking regarding the issues discussed, as well as any biases or beliefs you can think of that can help me. Thank you!

Answer 1

• Mistakes can be hard to digest, so sometimes we double down rather than face them. Our confirmation bias kicks in, causing us to seek out evidence to prove what we already believe.
• Psychologists call this cognitive dissonance — the stress we experience when we hold two contradictory thoughts, beliefs, opinions or attitudes.
• For example, you might believe you are a kind and fair person, so when you rudely cut someone off, you experience dissonance. To cope with it, you deny your mistake and insist the other driver should have seen you, or you had the right of way even if you didn’t.
• Cognitive dissonance threatened our sense of self.One study, published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, found that people who refused to apologize after a mistake had more self-esteem and felt more in control and powerful than those who did not refuse.
• When you refuse to admit your mistakes, you are also less open to constructive criticism, which can help hone skills, rectify bad habits and improve yourself over all.We cling to old ways of doing things, even when new ways are better and healthier and smarter. We cling to self-defeating beliefs long past their shelf life.
• Confirmation bias explains the way in which our brains seek information that ratifies our preexisting beliefs, and spurns that which contradicts them. When we come across information that aligns with our own opinions, we readily believe it to be true, but when we’re confronted with information that challenges our opinions, cognitive dissonance rears its head, and researchers have actually found that the reasoning parts of our brain shut down.
• The sunk cost fallacy explains how the more we invest in something, the more we fear losing that investment, and will thus continue doing it even we don’t really want to, in order to avoid knowing we wasted our time, money, and/or effort.