You Can’t Change the Mind of a Conservative

This post is intended for liberals only; conservatives should not read this. A new study out of Yale and Duke Universities confirms what many of us of the liberal persuasion have long suspected. When conservatives are presented with solid, verifiably factual data that undermines one of their assumptions, they react by more firmly holding the faulty assumption. Whereas when liberals are presented with solid, verifiably factual data that undermines one of their assumptions, they are more likely to adjust their assumption to fit the facts. The researchers called this conservative reaction the "backfire effect". No one knows for sure why this happens; but after all, the word “conservative” means “resistant to change” so I guess it should come as no surprise that conservatives are in fact resistant to change. The researchers theorize that conservatives might be especially prone to the backfire effect because they may have more rigid views than liberals: Upon hearing a refutation, conservatives might "argue back" against the refutation in their minds, thereby strengthening their belief in the faulty assumption.
I think this goes a long way toward explaining why McCain is polling about 50% despite his support of policies that have done so much damage to our country. If the election was based on readily apparent factual observations such as how well their policies have worked for the last 8 years, then McCain would be hard pressed to be polling 5%. Instead when faced with the obvious truth that the conservative policies of Bush have almost destroyed our country, almost everyone who voted for Bush is still going to stubbornly vote to continue those same failed policies under McCain. In other words, as the Yale study suggests, when faced with the undeniable truth that their policies don’t work, conservatives hold onto those policies even more strongly.
Maybe the 19th century British philosopher John Stuart Mill saw the essence of the difference between conservatives and liberals when he observed, “Not all conservatives are stupid people, but almost all stupid people are conservatives.”