Researchers: Facts only make people believe lies harder

I don't know. A lot of my family believes the weird emails going around sometimes about different things that turn out to be urban legends. If they'd just Snopes them... but they don't trust Snopes. So, everything you hear on the internet is true, y/y? Hehe.

The 'coming from a source you trust' angle is interesting.

Maximilia wrote:

I don't know. A lot of my family believes the weird emails going around sometimes about different things that turn out to be urban legends. If they'd just Snopes them... but they don't trust Snopes. So, everything you hear on the internet is true, y/y? Hehe.

What's hilarious/depressing is that some emails claim that "Snopes investigated it and found it was true!" Except if you actually do check Snopes, the claims of the email have been debunked.

TheHermit wrote:

Penguin wrote:

Part of the problem is that politically controversial topics were chosen, although I imagine it'd be hard to test belief vs. fact otherwise. From the blurb:

Quote :

In 2005, amid the strident calls for better media fact-checking in
the wake of the Iraq war, Michigan’s Nyhan and a colleague devised
an experiment in which participants were given mock news stories,
each of which contained a provably false, though nonetheless
widespread, claim made by a political figure: that there were WMDs
found in Iraq (there weren’t), that the Bush tax cuts increased
government revenues (revenues actually fell), and that the Bush
administration imposed a total ban on stem cell research (only certain
federal funding was restricted). Nyhan inserted a clear, direct correction
after each piece of misinformation, and then measured the study
participants to see if the correction took.

Given that a popular conservative belief basically says that the mainstream media is a liberal propaganda outlet, many of those people probably thought that the corrections were meant to mislead them, push-poll style.

Correlation, or causation? Even I'm not sure. Since the US mainstream media is not, in fact, liberal, I'm also uncertain this observation does much to damage the hypothesis.

This.

This.

Also, a Pew Research Center study in 2004 found that most reporters identified themselves as liberal. No matter how hard they try to keep their biases out of the news, it'll never happen when they are so lopsidedly liberal.

Now watch as Hermy claims he is right, in the face of clear evidence to the contrary, thereby proving the findings of the article in the OP. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

You're citing Bernard Goldberg? Seriously?

That guy is a mendacious hack that wouldn't know the truth if it bit him on the ass.

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Do you have any real argument, or at least ad hominem attacks against the other two sources? Or would you rather continue to brainlessly prove the Wolverines correct?

Maximilia wrote:

The 'coming from a source you trust' angle is interesting.

Actually 'coming from a source you trust' is the entire point.

If you don't feel like rifling through dozens of research papers and psychology textbooks, just look up Confirmation Bias on wikipedia for cliff notes. (and dozens upon dozen of links)

Since it looks like we're discussing politics, it begins with general catering to fears and insecurities. You hear what you want to hear, and a source of information gains your trust and devotion. And then there are the nay sayers, with their 'facts' and 'research', but your source tells you it's false and you start uttering the words 'liberal bias' without irony. Evidence keeps piling up, and you have no choice, but start denying with more and more venom, because there is always a possibility that they are the ones that are right, and that you are wrong, and for how long have you been wrong? For a year, five, dozen, decades? The amount of evidence piling up outside will crush your ego like a meteor striking a sand castle. Because that's what it's all about - preservation of self-esteem (a huge topic topic and motivator in psychology).

Coulter, Limbaugh, Beck, Palin and GOP fans have a binary choice: either keep being rabidly conservative, or commit mental suicide.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

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Do you have any real argument, or at least ad hominem attacks against the other two sources? Or would you rather continue to brainlessly prove the Wolverines correct?

Yeah my real argument is that Goldberg is full of shit. He twists facts to suit whatever theory he's pushing (he claimed that CBS "slobbered" all over Barack Obama in their coverage, conveniently ignoring similar pieces crafted for John McCain). He doctored a transcript of NBC's Tom Brokaw to support that same theory (a clean, unedited transcript that can be retrieved with a rudimentary Google search reveals the deception). He has been called out for his sloppy methods and flawed premises.

He has an agenda against the so-called "liberal media" (and if you really believe that the media is liberal, then you're not paying attention) because he got tossed over the side from CBS for a vitriolic rant he took to the papers back in 1996.

In other words, he's another peudo-intellectual with an ax to grind.

Psy-4 wrote:

Maximilia wrote:

The 'coming from a source you trust' angle is interesting.

Actually 'coming from a source you trust' is the entire point.

If you don't feel like rifling through dozens of research papers and psychology textbooks, just look up Confirmation Bias on wikipedia for cliff notes. (and dozens upon dozen of links)

Since it looks like we're discussing politics, it begins with general catering to fears and insecurities. You hear what you want to hear, and a source of information gains your trust and devotion. And then there are the nay sayers, with their 'facts' and 'research', but your source tells you it's false and you start uttering the words 'liberal bias' without irony. Evidence keeps piling up, and you have no choice, but start denying with more and more venom, because there is always a possibility that they are the ones that are right, and that you are wrong, and for how long have you been wrong? For a year, five, dozen, decades? The amount of evidence piling up outside will crush your ego like a meteor striking a sand castle. Because that's what it's all about - preservation of self-esteem (a huge topic topic and motivator in psychology).

Coulter, Limbaugh, Beck, Palin and GOP fans have a binary choice: either keep being rabidly conservative, or commit mental suicide.

Holy shit, Psy 4. You actually made sense for a change.