"Surely," we think, "if well-meaning people just examined the facts, and reasoned about them clearly, we could find political agreement." Well, apparently not. The headline is a little misleading. What the study actually found was that your biases may prevent you from reasoning properly if the conclusion you are likely to reach by doing so will cause cognitive dissonance. Sinclair Lewis made a similar observation a century ago: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Or, he might have written, when his worldview depends on it.
Posted on: Thu, 05 Sep 2013 00:07:50 +0000
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