Cognition

It's one of those days where I did a lot of reading and research and little posting until late. Starting with how facts can backfire - a recent study discovered a human tendency that will be deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation.

Here's a Ted video that decribes another human phenomena that produces similar results - errors in cognition: