Читать книгу Social Psychology - Daniel W. Barrett - Страница 135

If a complete undermining of the evidence used to create and support a belief failed to shake many participants of their patently false beliefs, then what more can be done to convince them to reject those beliefs? One strategy was examined by Anderson (1982). As described above, Anderson provided participants with evidence about the relationship between taking or avoiding risks and success as a firefighter. Participants exposed to evidence that risk takers were more successful wrote explanations arguing both for and against this claim, and those exposed to the opposite evidence did the same. All were forced to consider how the opposite of what they read could be true. Next they were given a chance to report what their true beliefs about the relationship were before the experiment began. Unlike in the case of simply being told that the evidence for their belief was fabricated, those participants who engaged in considering the opposite did in fact overcome their unsupported beliefs. Imagining how their beliefs could be false largely wiped out the belief perseverance effect described above (Anderson, 1982; Nestler, 2010).

In sum, sometimes our beliefs are mistaken: They simply are not true. As we’ve seen, there are a number of reasons that we nevertheless hold onto them. One reason is that we may have clung to a belief despite the fact that its evidence is undermined, because we created new reasons for maintaining it (Anderson et al., 1980). A second reason is that we may not have seriously considered alternative beliefs (Anderson, 1982).

Considering the Opposite: Imagining how one’s beliefs could be false