Not only that, but presenting people with facts can entrench them further in their beliefs. People willfully ignore facts that don’t correspond to their opinions.
“This bodes ill for a democracy, because most voters — the people making decisions about how the country runs — aren’t blank slates. They already have beliefs, and a set of facts lodged in their minds. The problem is that sometimes the things they think they know are objectively, provably false. And in the presence of the correct information, such people react very, very differently than the merely uninformed. Instead of changing their minds to reflect the correct information, they can entrench themselves even deeper.”
A very good article
How facts backfire – The Boston Globe.
Robin Edgar
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