In the 1970s and 1980s, a group of American social psychologists — Kuhn, Amsel, Brock, Lepper, Lord, and Ross — conducted a series of experiments designed to test how capable people really are of rationally evaluating evidence that supports or contradicts different beliefs. One of those experiments unfolded as follows. Participants debated a range of emotionally charged political questions — the death penalty, the causes of poverty, and similar issues. They were then presented with a collection of evidence: some supporting one position, some supporting the opposite view, and some methodologically flawed.
The organizers expected the exercise to narrow the divide. They assumed people would recognize that such questions are more complicated than they first appear, that the opposing side might possess part of the truth, and that extreme positions fail to reflect reality.
They were mistaken.
Once participants reviewed the evidence, both sides interpreted it as powerful confirmation of their own views. They emerged more convinced than before, more combative in their attitudes, and more certain that the other side was acting in bad faith. Today we understand this mechanism rather well. Once the human mind settles on a particular opinion, perception itself becomes selective, and contradictory information simply fails to register. The longer we engage with an issue, the more certain we become — on the basis of false evidence manufactured by our own minds.
Other experiments produced strikingly similar results. Yet they also showed that some people are capable of genuine openness and can change their minds when confronted with evidence against their beliefs. Curiously, those individuals were generally regarded within the group as abrasive, quarrelsome, and narcissistic.
So I find myself wondering which is preferable.