The whole Bill Nye/Ken Ham debate

[Angrboda]

Backfire effect

The "backfire effect" is a term coined by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler to describe how some individuals when confronted with evidence that conflicts with their beliefs come to hold their original position even more strongly:

For instance, in a dynamic process tracing experiment, Redlawsk (2002) finds that subjects who were not given a memory-based processing prime came to view their preferred candidate in a mock election more positively after being exposed to negative information about the candidate. Similarly, Republicans who were provided with a frame that attributed prevalence of Type 2 diabetes to neighborhood conditions were less likely to support public health measures targeting social determinants of health than their counterparts in a control condition (Gollust, Lantz, and Ubel 2009).

Another example of the backfire effect is given by Yale political scientist John Bullock. He found that a group of Democratic volunteers who did not favor the appointment of John G. Roberts Jr. to the U.S. Supreme Court became even more negative in their views about Roberts when told that he had been accused in an ad by an abortion-rights group of "supporting violent fringe groups and a convicted clinic bomber." The increase from 56% disapproval to 80% disapproval after being provided with data confirming their opinion is understandable. We know that providing political misinformation works by feeding into people's pre-existing beliefs. We're likely to accept information uncritically, true or false, that fits with what we already believe. What isn't so understandable is why, after being shown a refutation of the ad by abortion-rights supporters and being told that the advocacy group had withdrawn the ad, Democratic disapproval of Roberts dropped only to 72 percent. For many, the facts didn't have a significant effect on belief in the direction of the evidence. Despite strong evidence contrary to their belief, many were led to strengthen their pre-existing belief.

Nyhan and Reifler found a backfire effect in a study of conservatives. The Bush administration claimed that tax cuts would increase federal revenue (the cuts didn't have the promised effect). One group was offered a refutation of this claim by prominent economists that included current and former Bush administration officials. About 35 percent of conservatives told about the Bush claim believed it. The percentage of believers jumped to 67 when the conservatives were provided with the refutation of the idea that tax cuts increase revenue.

A final example:

A 2006 study by Charles Taber and Milton Lodge at Stony Brook University showed that politically sophisticated thinkers were even less open to new information than less sophisticated types. These people may be factually right about 90 percent of things, but their confidence makes it nearly impossible to correct the 10 percent on which they’re totally wrong.*

. . . . .

Whatever the cause, the backfire effect is very curious. The more ideological and the more emotion-based a belief is, the more likely it is that contrary evidence will be ineffective. There is some evidence that lack of self-confidence and insecurity correlate with the backfire effect. More research is needed to fully explain what additional factors lead some people to respond to contrary evidence by treating it as if it were additional support for one's belief. Further research is also needed to see if different groups are more susceptible to the backfire effect (liberals and conservatives, theists and atheists, skeptics and true believers) and, if so, why.

— Skeptic's Dictionary,

See also, "perseverance of belief"