https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/this-article-wont-change
-your-mind/519093/
There are small things that could help. One recent study
<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gch2.201600008/abstract?systemMe
ssage=WOL+Usage+report+download+page+will+be+unavailable+on+Friday+27th+Janu
ary+2017+at+23:00+GMT/+18:00+EST/+07:00+SGT+%28Saturday+28th+Jan+for+SGT%29+
+for+up+to+2+hours+due+to+essential+server+maintenance.+Apologies+for+the+in
convenience> suggests that people can be "inoculated" against
misinformation. For example, in the study, a message about the overwhelming
scientific consensus on climate change included a warning that "some
politically motivated groups use misleading tactics to try to convince the
public that there is a lot of disagreement among scientists." Exposing
people to the fact that this misinformation is out there should make them
more resistant to it if they encounter it later. And in the study at least,
it worked.
While there's no erasing humans' tribal tendencies, muddying the waters of
partisanship could make people more open to changing their minds. "We know
people are less biased if they see that policies are supported by a mix of
people from each party," Jerit says. "It doesn't seem like that's very
likely to happen in this contemporary period, but even to the extent that
they see within party disagreement, I think that is meaningful. Anything
that's breaking this pattern where you see these two parties acting as
homogeneous blocks, there's evidence that motivated reasoning decreases in
these contexts."
And here's where deliberative discussions might kick in.
It seems like if people are going to be open-minded, it's more likely to
happen in group interactions. As Manjoo noted in his book, when the U.S.
government was trying to get people to eat organ meat during World War II
(you know, to save the good stuff for our boys), researchers found that when
housewives had a group discussion about it, rather than just listening to a
nutritionist blather on about what a good idea it was, they were five times
more likely to actually cook up some organs. And groups are usually better
<http://www.apa.org/pubs/highlights/peeps/issue-36.aspx> at coming up with
the correct answers to reasoning tasks than individuals are.
Of course, the wisdom of groups is probably diminished if everyone in a
group already agrees with each other.
"One real advantage of group reasoning is that you get critical feedback,"
McIntyre says. "If you're in a silo, you don't get critical feedback, you
just get applause."
