That if the Earth is flat, that if the vaccine is to inoculate us with a microchip, that if WiFi causes cancer, that the Earth is flat … all these anti-scientific beliefs are not essentially ignorance (we are all quite ignorant about it) .
The most important thing is the so-called confirmation bias , which was coined by the English psychologist Peter Cathcart Wason after carrying out an experiment in this regard published in 1960.
Everyday religions
We believe the things that people who are part of our "tribe" believe because we do not seek so much truth as social acceptance . Unlike many other animal species, for humans there is no greater punishment than being rejected or excluded from the group.
Also, people treat the facts as more relevant when the facts tend to support their opinions. When the facts are against his opinions, the facts are not necessarily denied, but he assumes that the facts are less relevant or worthy of being considered on a moral level .
This conclusion was based on a series of new interviews, as well as a meta-analysis of published research on the topic, presented at a symposium as part of the annual convention of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. in San Antonio.
The results suggest that simply focusing on evidence and data is not enough to change someone’s opinion on a particular topic. We are tough . Other things persuade us.
This is also pointed out by Matthew Hornsey (University of Queensland), who he describes as ‘ thinking like a lawyer ‘, in the sense that people carefully select the pieces of information they need to pay attention to’ to reach conclusions that they want them to. be true. ‘ As Derren Brown abounds in his book Once Upon a Time … An Alternate Story of Happiness :
Similarly, we act under this influence whenever we look at the annoying habits of someone that we do not like, rather than the pleasant ones. The tendency to confirmation provides us daily with all the necessary tests to stick to the script and so that our life continues on the same line and seems true.
Of course, it also influences that we are putting science aside, and we do not understand the epistemological foundations on which scientific knowledge is based . In the following video I explain what liberal science is and why it is not based on consensus as we popularly understand it: