What happens when knowledge backfires?

Just how does one argue with a fool?

Conventional wisdom says one never should, because a fool cannot see wisdom and might make the wise see foolishness instead. But I recently happened upon a psychology paper which suggests that arguing with a fool might make the fool himself more foolish.

The paper, by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler, examines attempts to correct political misinformation. Here, the conventional wisdom says that the best thing to do is provide the facts: with luck, people will read the facts and agree, or, at worst, they’ll stay with their same viewpoint.

Right?

Unfortunately, no. Sometimes there is – what the authors termed – a backfire effect: facts presented against misinformation might make people believe the misinformation all the more.

I know a bit of the psychology of politics: I know that humans are likely to remember facts we agree with and forget facts we disagree with, that we’re predisposed to believing with certainty. And, as Nyhan and Reifler reference, those who are most certain in their beliefs are typically the most ignorant.

But the thought that knowledge can actually increase one’s ignorance is deeply unsettling to me.

I suppose I am a romantic at heart: I want to believe in the inherent goodness of humanity, that all our disputes are ultimately reasonable ones, in full knowledge of the arguments.

So this paper is drawing out the inner cynic in me. What’s the point in a reasonable debate – what’s the point in a newspaper columnist – if any position we take will only shore up the beliefs of those who disagree with us?

But then, I take a deep breath, count to ten, remember my statistics, and relax: the paper only stated a correlation, not a guaranteed causation. Nyhan and Reifler’s data suggests that the stronger one’s predisposition for believing the misinformation, the greater this backfire effect would be. And even then, this effect only happened on average, not always.

So to put myself in a psychologist’s shoes for a moment (gee, they’re nice and roomy), I’m going to make a guess as to why this occurs: perhaps in juggling between the piece of misinformation that seems dubious and a set of facts that contradicts some deeply held beliefs, the mind rationalizes and makes the dubious claim seem more reasonable.

That is merely the analysis of one not qualified to give such analyses, however. But what can we do about it?

Nyhan and Reifler point out that facts do change minds, which is especially critical with political misinformation: if left uncorrected, misinformation will do damage even among those who are leery about believing it.

And yet I still want to make the stubborn, mistrusting fools see the light. (It feels like a zealous priest versus heathen masses scenario; except that I’m more likely to smack someone over the head with a book on first-order logic and chide their terrible use of an if-then statement).

I can’t give up the belief that knowledge is good, that the backfire effect is not caused by greater knowledge, but something else entirely: maybe there’s something wrong with the way we give and receive knowledge.

Maybe we focus too much on reason, on the infallibility of facts (and teachers and pundits), on purely objective reporting, on who (rather than what) is right, when we instead need a friendly companion whose interest is not in lecturing but in sharing what knowledge they have gleaned, and learning from our knowledge as well.

Joseph is a graduate student.