Backfire Resistance

Whew. Just finished the first of four shows in 48 hours (or, as my sister pointed out, a show every 12 hours or so).

I'm almost too exhausted to be aghast-dismayed at the ongoing fallout of Ukraine-related news. Pompeo subpoenaed. The US special envoy to Kiev resigns. More House Dems (and even a House Republican) back impeachment inquiry. Geraldo says he'd like to "wap" the whistleblower.

I seem to recall--I can't locate it now--an addendum to research about the so-called "backfire effect." To refresh, the backfire effect names the tendency of those who deeply believe a false thing, folk who believe it in a my-identity-is-invested-in-this way, to resist evidence that contradicts their belief. Show an anti-vaxxer or dedicated flat earther why their arguments are just plain wrong, and often their initial response will be to double down, to become even more vehemently anti-vax or flat-earth.

As Yale researcher Dan Kahan as pointed out (again, I'm too tired to find the exact link, but much of his stuff is housed here), such resistance to belief change makes some rational sense. Identities are big, important, long-term investments of psychic energy that yield survival-relevant results in terms of the kind of social group we're linked to and embedded in. It's in my best interests to remain in line with the core beliefs/features of my social group. If my friends are flat-earthers, I want to remain friends with them, which in turn means I stick to flat-earth beliefs.

But--and this is the addendum I seem to remember--there are limits to the backfire effect. Our resistance to belief change isn't invulnerable. Enough counter-evidence from enough sources over enough time will eventually, usually, weaken our resolve.

I'm wondering if such a tipping point might eventually be reached in this affair. Given that what the White House has released on its own (the transcript, the complaint memo) has been so much worse than anyone expected, one wonders whether there's even worse we're not seeing. It's that, or one of two other possibilities: (1) the administration is defaulting to relatively high transparency, getting all the stuff out now, calculating that furor over it will burn out; or (2) they're just deluded about how damning the stuff is. Only time will tell.

If, though, more stuff keeps trickling out (a high-level defection/admission would be big), I'm curious to see how durable identity-based resistance would be on the right.

More tomorrow,

JF