I Don't Want to Be Right

In Maria Konnikova's article, I Don't Want to Be Right, she states that people are more likely to defend their beliefs than accept facts, she continues to talk about the possible techniques to persuade someone to to change their beliefs through facts, science, emotions and stories. A test that was performed were on people who believed that vaccines caused autism in children. The results said that showing the individuals the facts, emotional photographs and stories of the diseases the vaccines prevented caused no one to have a change in believe about vaccines. This test actually backfired and caused individuals to hold on to their beliefs more closely. Later on in the article Konnikova brings up the idea of self-affirmation. Self affirmation creates a low self esteem for the person when they feel their sense of self is threatened by the outside world and this feeling could change their behavior. One example that is used in the article is when women are asked their gender before taking an exam and they perform worse than when the question wasn't asked. This accurately shows how ones belief of themselves or 

of a situation could alter their performance or their judgement even though it may not be true. Konnikova is saying that beliefs,whether they are true or false, are very personal and people will defend their beliefs no matter what facts are provided to contract them. Even though not accepting the facts can be harmful in some situations, like the vaccine, we can't force people to receive it, and it may cause a lot of people to get sick from diseases that could have been eradicated. 

One of the topics that Mooney and Konnikova share is that people hold on to beliefs in a very personal manner. They hold on to them so strongly that they refuse to accept evidential facts that may prove their beliefs wrong. Mooney and Konnikova have acknowledged the idea that you can't change someones belief through facts because it will only result in a backfire. Konnikova uses the example of astrology in her article to explain how strong beliefs are harder persuade. She explains that in todays world if someone say the sun rotates around the earth and someone corrects them they will easily change their belief. However, in the time of Galileo when astronomy represented life, religion and nature it would much more difficult to try and convince them of a different sun-earth relationship.  Konnikova also brings in the idea of self-affirmation, self affirmation is basically when a persons behavior is altered due to a threat of their sense of self. They say we see self affirmation when we are asked to put our gender or ethnicity on exams like SATs and that they really do effect a persons performance. Self affirmation can also cause people to change their minds by placing doubts or second guesses into their heads. In the end, Konnikova explains that the issue of self identity and perception are to blame for the inability to change their mind with evidence is because of the way facts and evidence are perceived by the individual. Ones background and values that they grew up with make up how a person will perceive the information given to them.