{"id":2022,"date":"2010-07-14T00:17:54","date_gmt":"2010-07-14T08:17:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pearlescent.org\/blog\/2010\/07\/how-facts-backfire-the-boston-globe\/"},"modified":"2010-07-14T00:17:54","modified_gmt":"2010-07-14T08:17:54","slug":"how-facts-backfire-the-boston-globe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.pearlescent.org\/blog\/2010\/07\/how-facts-backfire-the-boston-globe\/","title":{"rendered":"How facts backfire &#8211; The Boston Globe"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='posterous_autopost'>\n<div class=\"posterous_bookmarklet_entry\">Researchers at the University of Michigan found that contrary to the notion that misinformation can be corrected with facts, facts can actually make the pull of misinformation even stronger.  <\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"posterous_long_quote\"><p>These findings open a long-running argument about the political ignorance of American citizens to broader questions about the interplay between the nature of human intelligence and our democratic ideals. Most of us like to believe that our opinions have been formed over time by careful, rational consideration of facts and ideas, and that the decisions based on those opinions, therefore, have the ring of soundness and intelligence. In reality, we often base our opinions on our <em>beliefs<\/em>, which can have an uneasy relationship with facts. And rather than facts driving beliefs, our beliefs can dictate the facts we chose to accept. They can cause us to twist facts so they fit better with our preconceived notions. Worst of all, they can lead us to uncritically accept bad information just because it reinforces our beliefs. This reinforcement makes us more confident we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re right, and even less likely to listen to any new information. And then we vote.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div class=\"posterous_quote_citation\">via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/bostonglobe\/ideas\/articles\/2010\/07\/11\/how_facts_backfire\/?page=full\" class=\"extlink\">boston.com<\/a> <\/div>\n<p>\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p style=\"font-size: 10px;\">  <a href=\"http:\/\/posterous.com\" class=\"extlink\">Posted via email<\/a>   from <a href=\"http:\/\/pearl.posterous.com\/how-facts-backfire-the-boston-globe-1\" class=\"extlink\">pearl&#8217;s posterous<\/a>  <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at the University of Michigan found that contrary to the notion that misinformation can be corrected with facts, facts can actually make the pull of misinformation even stronger. These findings open a long-running argument about the political ignorance of American citizens to broader questions about the interplay between the nature of human intelligence and &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pearlescent.org\/blog\/2010\/07\/how-facts-backfire-the-boston-globe\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;How facts backfire &#8211; The Boston Globe&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pearlescent.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pearlescent.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pearlescent.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pearlescent.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pearlescent.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.pearlescent.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pearlescent.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pearlescent.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pearlescent.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}