The Overkill Backfire Effect

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Lewandowski: When people are busy or distracted, corrections that repeat the myth can cause more harm than good. Lewandowski says repeating a correction is fine and having a strong and easy to understand message is fine. But overloading a person with dozens of corrections will only bolster their defenses,. This is why politicians have a single sound bite and they say it over and over again and nothing else.

If dumping evidence into people’s laps often just makes their beliefs stronger, would we just be better off trying some other tactic, or does the truth ever win?

Do people ever come around, or are we causing more harm than good by leaning on facts instead of some other technique?

In this episode we learn from two scientists how to combat the backfire effect. One used an ingenious research method to identify the breaking point at which people stop resisting and begin accepting the fact that they might be wrong. The other literally wrote the instruction manual for avoiding the backfire effect and debunking myths using the latest psychological research into effective persuasive techniques.

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