The Backfire Effect

Leadership Nuggets for the Troglodytes #2

Urban Myth - When your beliefs are challenged with facts, you alter your opinions and incorporate the new information into your thinking.

Reality - When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger. The Backfire Effect compels an individual to strengthen their original beliefs even in the face of contradictory evidence. 

The Misconception: When your beliefs are challenged with facts, you alter your opinions and incorporate the new information into your thinking.

The Truth: When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger in individuals who have a strong fixed focus.

What should be evident from the studies on the backfire effect is you can never win an argument online. When you start to pull out facts and figures, hyperlinks and quotes, you are actually making the opponent feel as though they are even more sure of their position than before you started the debate. As they match your fervor, the same thing happens in your skull. The backfire effect pushes both of you deeper into your original beliefs.

Have you ever noticed the peculiar tendency you have which lets encomiums pass through you, but you feel crushed by criticism? A thousand positive comments can slip by unnoticed, but one “you suck” comment can linger in your head for days. One hypothesis as to why this happens and why the backfire effect happens is that you spend much more time considering information you disagree with than you do information you accept. Information which lines up with what you already believe passes through the mind like a vapor, but when you come across something which threatens your beliefs, something which conflicts with your preconceived notions of how the world works, you seize up and take notice. It is theorized that there could be an evolutionary explanation. Our ancestors paid more attention and spent more time thinking about negative stimuli than positive because bad things required a response. Those who failed to address negative stimuli failed to keep breathing.

Leadership Focus – As Leaders, we need to keep an Open Mind and focus on facts impartially and rationally so that we can avoid the Backfire Effect and take well informed decisions without bias and prejudice.

Additional Readings

For the low down on the Troglodytes, look here -

The Dawn of the Troglodytes - https://www.garudax.id/pulse/turangawaewae-place-stand-badri-n-srinivasan/