Ignorance may be bliss, but being ridiculed on Reddit certainly is not. Logically, we should back down when called out for spreading misinformation. Interestingly enough, however, a bruised ego can actually fuel belief in false ideas. Brendan Nyhan, a Dartmouth College political scientist, explored this so-called "backfire effect" in a 2021 article. Nyhan explained that a typical response to mistaken beliefs is to try to "set the record straight by providing accurate information—for instance, by providing evidence of the scientific consensus on climate change". Unfortunately, this is not always the most effective route.
When the listener is already skeptical, they are not likely to have an open mind. Nyhan found that even “corrective information in news reports may fail to reduce misperceptions and can sometimes increase them for the ideological group most likely to hold those misperceptions”. For example, a Democrat is more likely to accept the correction of a false statement George W. Bush made about Iraq than a Republican is. It can be hard for people to recognize their fallibility without taking it personally.
Luckily, the backfire effect is not impenetrable. Despite being stubborn, but we are capable of changing our minds. One larger danger making misperceptions difficult to eradicate, Nyhan notes, is the media. He shares that media "frequently fails to aggressively fact-check false statements by political elites or resorts to neutral 'he said' 'she said' coverage of...
A front-page article with the byline of veteran New York Times opinion writer Nicholas Kristof is the latest poisonous example of what I call the NGO “halo effect.” Headlined “The Silence That Mee...