Transcripción:
In 1975, psychologist Daniel Batson from the University of Kansas ran a bold experiment.
To a group of young Christians, Batson presented evidence that Jesus Christ did not rise
from the dead. Now the evidence wasn’t real, it was created for the experiment. Batson
wanted to see how the Christians would react.
The results were surprising. The left bar here shows the level of religious belief before
receiving the evidence. The right bar shows religious belief after the evidence. After
people saw evidence that ran counter to their religious belief, their faith actually got stronger.
Now why am I talking about a 1970s experiment examining the belief system of young Christians?
This study raises a key question: how can people update their beliefs in the opposite
direction to the evidence? How could they come to have more faith in their religious
belief than before they received evidence to the contrary?
This type of response is called the worldview backfire effect. Evidence can backfire if
it threatens someone’s worldview. And it doesn’t just apply to religious faith. Let’s
look at some other examples.
One recent study by Brendan Nyhan and his colleagues tested people’s intent to vaccinate
their children. This graph shows the level of intent to vaccinate for people who were
least favourable towards vaccination. The experimenters showed a range of different
messages about the importance of vaccination to people who deny the positive benefits of
vaccination. The bar on the left here shows the intent to vaccinate amongst a control
group, who weren’t shown any messages.
A second group read a message explaining the risks of preventable diseases. As you can
see, no difference to the control group.
A third group read dramatic narratives about diseases. Again, there was no increase in
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