Library Home: News Literacy: News Views & Fact Checking Resources: Why it is hard to change opinions

Common Biases

Confirmation bias.
"Confirmation bias is the inclination to interpret information selectively so that it reinforces a preestablished set of beliefs."
Cultural bias.
Assuming your worldview is the most correct, thereby placing other views at lesser value.
Self-serving bias.
"Self-serving bias is a psychological theory stating that people are more likely to attribute their success to their own actions and character traits while attributing their problems to outside factors."

Understanding and Reflecting on Bias

Understanding and Interrupting Bias
"Bias, simply put, is a preference or tendency to respond one way versus another."
Effective mitigation of the belief perseverance bias after the retraction of misinformation: Awareness training and counter-speech
"Research has shown that individuals persevere in their biased beliefs and opinions even after the retraction of misinformation. This phenomenon is known as the belief perseverance bias."
Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds
You get a dopamine reward when processing information that supports your beliefs.

Why does it seem so hard to change people's minds?

Cognitive dissonance. Seems to discourage changing your opinion.
Cognitive dissonance causes a feeling of discomfort that can motivate people to try to feel better. People may do this via defense mechanisms, such as avoidance. Confirmation Bias may guard us from Cognitive Dissonance, but is this good?
Cognitive bias.
"Cognitive biases are judgment errors that people commit due to irrational thought processes. Despite the fact that they often produce unfavorable consequences, cognitive biases are considered psychologically satisfying and convenient. Cognitive biases are often difficult to overcome because they help people simplify the world around them."
Peer reviewed Academic Journal "Mitigating Cognitive Bias to Improve Organizational Decisions: An Integrative Review, Framework, and Research Agenda. Mitigating Cognitive Bias to Improve Organizational Decisions: An Integrative Review"
Peer reviewed Academic Journal "Try to design an approach to making a judgment; don't just go into it trusting your intuition.': Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman discusses the stubbornness of cognitive biases, the 'noise'"

Food for thought: How are class, cultural, and "like-me" indicators used to reject others?

Stereotypes As Placeholders, Assumptions, and Estimates.

The less you know about something, the more your mind has to guess.

Guesses are often based on prior experience, or other people's stories.

Prior experience may be so limited that it is not an accurate indicator of future interactions.

Stories are often distorted for entertainment.

Theoretically, stereotypes should be replaced with actual knowledge. Realistically, stereotypes are seldom challenged unless something happens to create a reason to change the initial assumption. Challenging stereotypes is hard work.

Goodreads: Kofi Annan > Quotes
“We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race.”
"I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one 'race' - the human race - and that we are all members of it."
- Margaret Atwood
Types of discrimination - Wikipedia

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness

Mark Twain's quotations in context: Reports of Mark Twain’s Travel Quotations,,, (clearingcustoms.net/)
" Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime."
New study confirms Mark Twain’s saying: Travel is fatal to prejudice (psypost.org)
"the more countries one travels, the more trusting one is."
"Visiting places that are unfamiliar and different appears to be a key factor. In their final experiment, Cao and her found those who visited places less similar than their homeland became more trusting than those who visited places more similar to their homeland."

You can pick any difference and use it to reject people.

VIDEO Link:Jane Elliott on Her "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Exercise" and Fighting Racism

Anti-Racism Educator Jane Elliott: ‘There’s Only One Race. The Human Race' | NBC BLK | NBC News
Known for her “blue-eyed, brown-eyed” experiment, where she ran her class as though the children with brown eyes were superior to children with blue eyes, educator Jane Elliott has spent the last 50 years fighting racism.