“The Backfire Effect” Is the Cognitive Concept of the Moment

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If you’ve been awake and online in the past 24 hours, there’s a good chance someone you know has shared this lovely Oatmeal comic. Yes, the one that explains why our brains our wired to reject information that goes against our previously held beliefs.

The comic was based on a three-episode sequence from You Are Not So Smart — a popular podcast and WordPress.com site — devoted to the backfire effect, the name of this cognitive phenomenon. On the first episode, the YANSS team goes deeper into the neurological underpinnings of this resistance to information that might change our minds:

By placing subjects in an MRI machine and then asking them to consider counterarguments to their strongly held political beliefs, Jonas Kaplan’s and Sarah Gimbel’s research, conducted along with neuroscientist Sam Harris, revealed that when people were presented with evidence that alerted them to the possibility that their political beliefs might be incorrect, they reacted with the same brain regions that would come online if they were responding to a physical threat.

“The response in the brain that we see is very similar to what would happen if, say, you were walking through the forest and came across a bear,” explains Gimbel in the episode. “Your brain would have this automatic fight-or-flight [response]…and your body prepares to protect itself.”

Learn more about the backfire effect by listening to the first episode on You Are Not So Smart.

29 Comments

  4. This comic came up in an earlier conversation today. The subject matter is interesting; however, it concerns me to see people in my circle already using it to try to twist argument sin their favor. Just because someone fundamentally rejects someone else’s intellectual position does not automatically mean that response is baseless.

    Liked by 9 people

  7. We only listen what we’ve learnt to listen, we only speak what we are taught to speak, and we only believe what are given to believe. It’s really difficult to make our minds blank slates again…

    Liked by 6 people

  11. Hmm.. an interesting read. 🙂 Love the complexity of our brains!
    Maybe, sometimes, information opposite to the one which the brain feels is against what it has learned and accumulated this far is rejected as the brain feels that this new info can interfere with its current knowledge and thinking mechanisms.
    So it feels that new info is threatening to it somehow and it is treated as foreign at first leading to a fight or flight response!

    Liked by 6 people

  17. It’s a real problem. I always try to see things from as many points of view as possible but like any other human, there are many points that I fight until I have time to myself to dwell on the subject.

    Liked by 5 people

  22. It is really hard to change our beliefs! Or, to recognize from our own behavior that we need to examine what we are saying to ourselves. My book At Eden’s Gate: Whole Health and Well-Being helps with this, but personally I still find myself needing to re-examine my thoughts when I get “het up” about something!

    Liked by 3 people

  23. Wow, really interesting! For people who want to read more, check out “The Righteous Mind” by Jonathan Haidt, its all about the emotional and cultural basis of morality. I read it last summer, and it really changed my worldview.

    Liked by 5 people

  24. I can vouch for that effect. I’m surprised it’s a surprise. Like Dale Carnegie said long before the backfire effect, “No one wins an argument” Peace Jim.

    Liked by 3 people

  25. I think we’ve all, at one point or another, witnessed this happening or recognized it happening within ourselves. Perhaps that’s why these topics are so interesting to most people. I am no exception, and simply reading this information makes me more likely to be able to look at my own behavior objectively and hopefully prevent this type of thing. It also can help me to be more understanding of what may be happening psychologically to folks that I don’t agree with.
    Thanks for the interesting read!

    Liked by 4 people

  26. Very true! I do this all the time even though I am aware of this phenomenon. I thought it was interesting how they likened an opposing idea to a physical threat, in that the brain experiences it in similar ways.

    Liked by 2 people

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