posted March 05, 2014 06:25 PM            

On Monday, I reported on the latest study to take a bite out of the idea of human rationality. In a paper just published in Pediatrics, Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth and his colleagues showed that presenting people with information confirming the safety of vaccines triggered a "backfire effect," in which people who already distrusted vaccines actually became less likely to say they would vaccinate their kids.

Unfortunately, this is hardly the only example of such a frustrating response being documented by researchers. Nyhan and his co-author Jason Reifler of the University of Exeter have captured several others, as have other researchers. Here are some examples:

1. Tax Cuts Increase Revenue? In a 2010 study, Nyhan and Reifler asked people to read a fake newspaper article containing a real quotation of George W. Bush, in which the former president asserted that his tax cuts "helped increase revenues to the Treasury." In some versions of the article, this false claim was then debunked by economic evidence: A correction appended to the end of the article stated that in fact, the Bush tax cuts "were followed by an unprecedented three-year decline in nominal tax revenues, from $2 trillion in 2000 to $1.8 trillion in 2003." The study found that conservatives who read the correction were twice as likely to believe Bush's claim was true as were conservatives who did not read the correction.

2. Death Panels! Another notorious political falsehood is Sarah Palin's claim that Obamacare would create "death panels." To test whether they could undo the damage caused by this highly influential morsel of misinformation, Nyhan and his colleagues had study subjects read an article about the "death panels" claim, which in some cases ended with a factual correction explaining that "nonpartisan health care experts have concluded that Palin is wrong." Among survey respondents who were very pro-Palin and who had a high level of political knowledge, the correction actually made them more likely to wrongly embrace the false "death panels" theory.

3. Obama is a Muslim! And if that's still not enough, yet another Nyhan and Reifler study examined the persistence of the "President Obama is a Muslim" myth. In this case, respondents watched a video of President Obama denying that he is a Muslim or even stating affirmatively, "I am a Christian." Once again, the correction—uttered in this case by the president himself—often backfired in the study, making belief in the falsehood that Obama is a Muslim worse among certain study participants. What's more, the backfire effect was particularly notable when the researchers administering the study were white. When they were non-white, subjects were more willing to change their minds, an effect the researchers explained by noting that "social desirability concerns may affect how respondents behave when asked about sensitive topics." In other words, in the company of someone from a different race than their own, people tend to shift their responses based upon what they think that person's worldview might be.

4. The Alleged Iraq-Al Qaeda Link. In a 2009 study, Monica Prasad of Northwestern University and her colleagues directly challenged Republican partisans about their false belief that Iraq and Al Qaeda collaborated in the 9/11 attacks, a common charge during the Bush years. The so-called challenge interviews included citing the findings of the 9/11 Commission and even a statement by George W. Bush, asserting that his administration had "never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and Al Qaeda." Despite these facts, only one out of 49 partisans changed his or her mind after the factual correction. Forty-one of the partisans "deflected" the information in a variety of ways, and 7 actually denied holding the belief in the first place (although they clearly had).

5. Global Warming. On the climate issue, there does not appear to be any study that clearly documents a backfire effect. However, in a 2011 study, researchers at American University and Ohio State found a closely related "boomerang effect." In the experiment, research subjects from upstate New York read news articles about how climate change might increase the spread of West Nile Virus, which were accompanied by the pictures of the faces of farmers who might be affected. But in one case, the people were said to be farmers in upstate New York (in other words, victims who were quite socially similar to the research subjects); in the other, they were described as farmers from either Georgia or from France (much more distant victims). The intent of the article was to raise concern about the health consequences of climate change, but when Republicans read the article about the more distant farmers, their support for action on climate change decreased, a pattern that was stronger as their Republican partisanship increased. (When Republicans read about the proximate, New York farmers, there was no boomerang effect, but they did not become more supportive of climate action either.)

posted March 05, 2014 07:46 PM            

Psychologists would explain this by the use of "dissonance theory".

A 2004 study by Nadler and Saguy pre-measured the attitude of Israeli youth towards palestinians. They then divided the youths into two groups, giving each one a different fabricated speech by a palestinian leader. One contained reconciliatory language, where the leader addressed passed transgressions towards the israeli. The other speech was neutral.

The youth who were pre-measured as having the most negative attitude towards palestinian were more negative towards them after reading the reconciliatory speech than the neutral speech (and more negative than when they started out). The most neutral youths reacted the best to the reconciliatory speech, and neutrally to the neutral speech.

posted March 05, 2014 08:37 PM            

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Originally posted by Randall:
A decent percentage of pediatricians don't vaccinate their own kids, and this article is the most BS I've ever seen compacted in one place at the same time.

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It's not at all on the safety of vaccines in general. But if you were of the opinion that all vaccines are BS, but presented with credible and overwhelming evidence that one specific vaccine was not, would you not consider changing your opinion?

posted March 05, 2014 08:50 PM            

If you and your best friend meet and hang out with a new person for a couple of hours, and the new person eventually leaves... It is likely you are going to discuss your perceptions of this new person. Say you think (s)he was absolutely awful. Your best friend thought (s)he was great. Chance is you are going to try your best to change either your own mind or the mind of your friend so that you agree, because it is cognitively uncomfortable to disagree with someone whom you hold in high regard and surround yourself with often. This is a reason why good friends often agree on the people around them.

It is also the reason why we so often attempt to persuade other people to our point of view. It is uncomfortable for our brains to be constantly confronted with dissonant information to what you already believe.

The point at which we change our minds is when we are confronted with an overwhelming degree of "evidence" to the contrary of our beliefs. But a person's capacity for denial and cognitive dissonance within themselves is different. Which is why it takes some people more than others.

posted March 06, 2014 07:25 AM            

Out of that article- [which was great BTW]
you extrapolate vaccines?

Nice tree.

posted March 06, 2014 07:28 AM            

Everyone now knows lowering business and individual tax rates increases tax revenue to the federal government. It works every time it's done...JFK, Ronald Reagan, George W Bush. It just doesn't happen the next day as the bozos at Mother Earth would like everyone to believe it should. There's a lag of 2-3 years for the obvious reasons anyone with 2 brain cells would understand.

Everyone now knows O'BomberCare has a death panel. It's called the IPAB...Independent Payment Advisory Board. A leftist icon...Howard Dean has admitted the IPAB is the death panel in O'BomberCare which would refuse to pay medical bills for patients with life threatening illnesses and diseases...A DEATH PANEL FROM WHICH THERE IS NO APPEAL. Sarah Palin was and is right about the IPAB in O'BomberCare.

Obamacare includes death panels according to Democrat Howard Dean

"Dean’s silent acknowledgement has also vindicated former Alaskan Governor and former Vice Presidential Candidate, Sarah Palin when she said in 2009, that Obamacare contained “Death Panels”.

In 2009, Palin stated, “The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”

Three years later in 2012, Palin referred back to her “Death Panel” comments and said, “It was a pretty long post, but a lot of people seem to have only read two words of it: “death panel.” Though I was called a liar for calling it like it is, many of these accusers finally saw that Obamacare did in fact create a panel of faceless bureaucrats who have the power to make life and death decisions about health care funding. It’s called the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), and its purpose all along has been to “keep costs down” by actually denying care via price controls and typically inefficient bureaucracy.”

http://www.examiner.com/article/obamacare-includes-death-panels-according-to-democrat-howard-dean

This Mother Jones article isn't worth the time it takes to refute it's many hysterical pronouncements. In that, it's typical of Mother Jones the leftist rag mag and also of acoustic who always looks for the biggest bunch of hysterical bullshiiit to post.

posted March 06, 2014 02:26 PM            

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this article is the most BS I've ever seen compacted in one place at the same time.

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Why do you say such things? I wouldn't be surprised to see you say something like this about any article you didn't like, but you're not rationally proving your assertion by making the assertion. You're just proving that you're easily offended.

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The point at which we change our minds is when we are confronted with an overwhelming degree of "evidence" to the contrary of our beliefs. But a person's capacity for denial and cognitive dissonance within themselves is different. Which is why it takes some people more than others.

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It all comes down to how we process new information. The reason why we say humans are limited information processors is because we use schemas, stereotypes, motivated reasoning, etc, to make it easier. However by making it easier for ourselves, we also loose part of the information on the way. This is why the information processing deficit occurs, and people live in ignorance.

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People are inherently lazy. The less lazy people are, the more likely they are to subject themselves to more thorough lines of thinking. The idiot trusts their gut, while the intelligent person has the self-discipline to take more time in assessing information when coming to a conclusion. At least that seems to be what is evidenced in Thinking Fast & Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

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The science behind vaccines is flawed, so I both believe that they don't work and that they are also very dangerous.

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It's not. It's well tested with overwhelmingly positive results.

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They are in almost every circumstance voluntary--even in military service and with international travel.

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If you try to opt out of immunizations, the terms of your contract materially changes in the military. If you contract a disease for which there is an immunization available, any lost days out must be made up. Any disability incurred will not be eligible for military benefit. In the event of foreign travel you may be quarantined on your ship, for instance, in order to comply with health restrictions of the host country. Further, your C.O. can revoke your waiver if there's an imminent risk of disease.
I was in the Navy for four years. We got shots often. They weren't dangerous, nor are they generally.

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Everyone now knows lowering business and individual tax rates increases tax revenue to the federal government. It works every time it's done...JFK, Ronald Reagan, George W Bush.

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Don't be stupid, Jwhop. Seriously. IF you want to assert something that we all know is false, the least you could do is prove your assertion.

Sen. Jeff Sessions wrongly claimed that federal revenues "went up every single year" after the Bush tax cuts were "put in." Actually, federal revenues declined for three straight years after the first tax cut was signed in 2001. http://www.factcheck.org/2011/07/sessions-wrong-on-bush-tax-cuts/

A post from Howard Dean doesn't prove "death panels." Death panels were and always will be rightly discredited. I love how your article goes on to claim Howard Dean wrong on everything else. He's right on this one little thing where he agrees with us, but otherwise he's wrong. Dumb.

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This Mother Jones article isn't worth the time it takes to refute it's many hysterical pronouncements. In that, it's typical of Mother Jones the leftist rag mag and also of acoustic who always looks for the biggest bunch of hysterical bullshiiit to post.

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posted March 07, 2014 12:12 AM            

It's an interesting field of study, though, astrology. I'm looking into some of the "science" that has taken place, and while I've barely dipped my toe into the water it's fascinating. I'm reading about Carlson's 1985 study. I started at a site that I guess enjoys taking a skeptical view on certain scientific projects. That's lead me to this: http://www.astronlp.com/Carlson%20Astrology%20Experiments.html

Eysenck reminds the reader that ‘testing astrology is a complex and difficult field, as indeed all fields relating to psychological variables’. He noted the absence of any psychologists as advisors, and said “Carlson selected a psychological test, which proved to be unsuitable, and which any competent psychologist could have predicted would prove so”.

Eysenck is Dr. Hans Eysenck: the time of his death, Eysenck was the living psychologist most frequently cited in science journals."

The test he refers to is the CPI test Carlson administered to the test subjects. Many of the test subjects were unable to pick their own results to the CPI test, and didn't do any better than the astrologers who were correct the same amount they might be if they had picked at random.

Eysenck wrote a book regarding astrology with David Nias. Purports to delve into all of the modern study of astrology and cosmobiology.
It's called "Astrology: Science or Superstition?"

I wonder if science even knows how to test astrology.

posted March 07, 2014 01:54 PM            

Anyway, seeing as the planets have a gravitational effect on us since we are 80% water I think it is likely they can have some effect, although it would be hard to measure. Likewise, I think it would make sense that what time of the year you are born (seasonally) could have an effect on personality.

posted March 07, 2014 02:07 PM            

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Originally posted by AcousticGod:
Given your record on science, I'm not sure that I'm up to endorsing your views here. Maybe you're right, but maybe you're wrong. I haven't delved into researching this area to any great degree.

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