The Effective Tipping Point

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Red Loss and his team found that around 14% or so negative information, challenging information, shows the effect of people actually beginning to go, Hmm, maybe I should rethink this. But they don't actually become more negative than they started out until about three and 10 pieces of information challenge their expectation. That number, 30%, not only is it probably different for every person, is probably completely different in the real world.

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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