Why people believe what they do

It has always amazed me that otherwise smart, reasonable people believe in conspiracy theories in the face of overwhelming, verifiable evidence to the contrary and don’t believe in climate change despite overwhelming, verifiable, incontrovertible scientific evidence proving it exists.

I have several friends who I respect greatly for their intelligence and level-headedness who dispute climate change despite the fact that 98% of research climatologists agree about the existence of climate change and it’s potential impact.

NPR did a story a week or so ago about Cultural Cognition that answers the question. Essentially, Cultural Cognitions says that people tend to conform their factual beliefs to ones that are consistent with their cultural outlook, their world view.

Social scientist and lawyer Don Bramanis on the faculty at George Washington University and part of The Cultural Cognition Project and says, “It doesn’t matter whether you show them negative or positive information, they reject the information that is contrary to what they would like to believe”.

“Basically the reason that people react in a close-minded way to information is that the implications of it threaten their values,” says Dan Kahan, a law professor at Yale University and a member of The Cultural Cognition Project.

This explains why people still believe that vaccines are bad and linked to Autism despite the fact that there is absolutely no proof about this whatsoever – in fact, information that has been used as “proof” in the past has been wholly debunked as false and discredited.