Why They Fight the Facts

Along with combating audience attitudes, we have other
cognitive phenomena such as Confirmation Bias.
Confirmation Bias is a theory that says that generally brains
like to confirm what we think we already know and dismiss
everything else (Marks & Fraley, 2006). This happens
because our brains hate cognitive dissonance, which is
simply the uncomfortable feeling we have when what we
think we know doesn’t match what we are being told.
Confirmation Bias helps get rid of that by saying, “let’s
keep only THIS information and trash the rest”. Brains are
tricky that way. Confirmation Bias is related to the Backfire
Effect. The Backfire Effect can occur when people have
very strongly held beliefs and are given contradictory
information to that belief.