Belief perseverance (also known as conceptual conservatism
) is maintaining a belief despite new information that firmly contradicts it. Such beliefs may even be strengthened when others attempt to present evidence
debunking them, a phenomenon known as the
backfire effect (compare
boomerang effect). For example, in a 2014 article in ''
The Atlantic
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
'', journalist Cari Romm describes a study involving
vaccination hesitancy. In the study, the subjects expressed their concerns of the side effects of
flu shots. After being told that the vaccination was completely safe, they became even less eager to accept them. This new knowledge pushed them to distrust the vaccine even more, reinforcing the idea that they already had before.
There are three kinds of backfire effects: Familiarity Backfire Effect (from making myths more familiar), Overkill Backfire Effect (from providing too many arguments), and Worldview Backfire Effect (from providing evidence that threatens someone’s worldview). According to Cook & Lewandowsky (2011), there are a number of techniques to debunk misinformation, such as emphasizing the core facts and not the myth, or providing explicit warnings that the upcoming information is false, and providing alternative explanations to fill the gaps left by debunking the misinformation. However, more recent studies provided evidence that the backfire effects are not as likely as once thought.
Since
rationality
Rationality is the quality of being guided by or based on reasons. In this regard, a person acts rationally if they have a good reason for what they do or a belief is rational if it is based on strong evidence. This quality can apply to an ab ...
involves conceptual flexibility, belief perseverance is consistent with the view that human beings act at times in an irrational manner. Philosopher
F.C.S. Schiller holds that belief perseverance "deserves to rank among the fundamental 'laws' of nature".
Evidence from experimental psychology
According to
Lee Ross
Lee David Ross (August 25, 1942 – May 14, 2021) was a Canadian-American professor. He held the title of the Stanford Federal Credit Union Professor of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University and was an influential social psychologist w ...
and
Craig A. Anderson, "beliefs are remarkably resilient in the face of empirical challenges that seem logically devastating". The belief perseverance notion can be used to explain or reinterpret the following experiments.
The first study of belief perseverance was carried out by
Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter.
These psychiatrists spent time with members of a
doomsday cult
A doomsday cult is a cult, that believes in apocalypticism and millenarianism, including both those that predict disaster and those that attempt to destroy the entire universe. Sociologist John Lofland coined the term ''doomsday cult'' in his ...
who believed the world would end on December 21, 1954.
Despite the failure of the forecast, most believers continued to adhere to their faith.
In ''
When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World'' (1956) and ''A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance'' (1957), Festinger proposed that human beings strive for internal psychological consistency to function mentally in the
real world.
A person who experiences internal inconsistency tends to become psychologically uncomfortable and is motivated to reduce the
cognitive dissonance
In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information, and the mental toll of it. Relevant items of information include a person's actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environmen ...
.
[Festinger, L. (1957). ''A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance''. California: Stanford University Press.] They tend to make changes to
justify the stressful behavior, either by adding new parts to the cognition causing the psychological dissonance (
rationalization) or by avoiding circumstances and contradictory information likely to increase the magnitude of the cognitive dissonance (
confirmation bias
Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring ...
).
When asked to reappraise probability estimates in light of new information, subjects displayed a marked tendency to give insufficient weight to the new evidence. They refused to acknowledge the inaccurate prediction as a reflection of the overall validity of their faith. In some cases, subjects reported having a stronger faith in their religion than before.
In a separate study, mathematically capable teenagers and adults were given seven arithmetical problems and asked to estimate approximate solutions using manual estimating. Then, using a calculator rigged to provide increasingly erroneous figures, they were asked for accurate answers (e.g., yielding 252 × 1.2 = 452.4, when it is actually 302.4). About half of the participants went through all seven tasks while commenting on their estimating abilities or tactics, never letting go of the belief that calculators are infallible. They simply refused to admit that their previous assumptions about calculators could have been incorrect.
Lee Ross and Craig A. Anderson led some subjects to the false belief that there existed a positive correlation between a firefighter's stated preference for taking risks and their occupational performance. Other subjects were told that the correlation was negative. The participants were then thoroughly debriefed and informed that there was no link between risk taking and performance. These authors found that post-debriefing interviews pointed to significant levels of belief perseverance.
In another study, subjects spent about four hours following instructions of a hands-on instructional manual. At a certain point, the manual introduced a formula which led them to believe that
sphere
A sphere () is a geometrical object that is a three-dimensional analogue to a two-dimensional circle. A sphere is the set of points that are all at the same distance from a given point in three-dimensional space.. That given point is the c ...
s were 50 percent larger than they are. Subjects were then given an actual sphere and asked to determine its volume; first by using the formula, and then by filling the sphere with water, transferring the water to a box, and directly measuring the volume of the water in the box. In the last experiment in this series, all 19 subjects held a Ph.D. degree in a natural science, were employed as researchers or professors at two major universities, and carried out the comparison between the two volume measurements a second time with a larger sphere. All but one of these scientists clung to the spurious formula despite their
empirical observations.
In cultural innovations
Physicist
Max Planck
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (, ; 23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.
Planck made many substantial contributions to theoretical p ...
wrote that "the new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it". For example, the
heliocentric theory of the great Greek astronomer,
Aristarchus of Samos
Aristarchus of Samos (; grc-gre, Ἀρίσταρχος ὁ Σάμιος, ''Aristarkhos ho Samios''; ) was an ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician who presented the first known heliocentric model that placed the Sun at the center of the ...
, had to be rediscovered about 1,800 years later, and even then undergo a major struggle before astronomers took its veracity for granted.
Belief persistence is frequently accompanied by intrapersonal cognitive processes. "When the decisive facts did at length obtrude themselves upon my notice," wrote the chemist
Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley (; 24 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was an English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, and liberal political theorist. He published over 150 works, and conducted ...
, "it was very slowly, and with great hesitation, that I yielded to the evidence of my senses."
In education
Students often "cling to ideas that form part of their world view even when confronted by information that does not coincide with this view." For example, students may spend months studying the solar system and do well on related tests, but still believe that moon phases are produced by Earth's shadow. What they learned was not able to intrude on the beliefs they held prior to that knowledge.
Causes
The causes of belief perseverance remain unclear. Experiments in the 2010s suggest that neurochemical processes in the
brain
A brain is an organ (biology), organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It is located in the head, usually close to the sensory organs for senses such as Visual perception, vision. I ...
underlie the strong
attentional bias
Attentional bias refers to how a person's perception is affected by selective factors in their attention. Attentional biases may explain an individual's failure to consider alternative possibilities when occupied with an existing train of thought. ...
of reward learning. Similar processes could underlie belief perseverance.
Peter Marris suggests that the process of abandoning a conviction is similar to the working out of grief. "The impulse to defend the predictability of life is a fundamental and universal principle of human psychology." Human beings possess "a deep-rooted and insistent need for continuity".
Philosopher of science
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Samuel Kuhn (; July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American philosopher of science whose 1962 book '' The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term ''paradig ...
points to the resemblance between conceptual change and
Gestalt perceptual shifts (e.g., the difficulty encountered in
seeing the hag as a young lady). Hence, the difficulty of switching from one conviction to another could be traced to the difficulty of rearranging one's perceptual or cognitive field.
See also
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References
Further reading
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* {{Cite journal , doi=10.1016/0362-3319(94)90026-4 , title = Conceptual conservatism: An understated variable in human affairs?, journal = The Social Science Journal, volume = 31, issue = 3, pages = 307–318, year = 1994, last1 = Nissani, first1 = M.
Cognitive psychology
Cognitive inertia