What could I say to change your mind? If that sounds like a trick question it’s because it is. All the evidence suggests that it is extremely difficult to get people to flip that mental switch and reject a firmly held belief. Most of us are set in our ways.
Psychologists are trying to understand the phenomenon, and their work has given us several useful concepts, such as “confirmation bias”, in which we look for and accept evidence that supports our existing views and reject any that contradicts them. (As the joke goes: since learning about confirmation bias, I keep seeing it everywhere.) Human beings also use “motivated reasoning”, interpreting new information in ways that are most sympathetic to their world-view. For instance: did you think that the mass resignation from the shadow cabinet was an unforgivable act of disloyalty at a time of national emergency, or the desperate gamble of a hard-pressed group of people who felt that it was the only way to save the Labour Party?
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