My Dear Uncle

 Today, I will discuss the perseverance effect, which is when someone continues to believe something after it has been proven to be false (Ross et al., 1975). In one study, researchers tasked participants to examine suicide notes to find out which ones were real and which ones were written by the researchers (Ross et al., 1975). Obviously, all the notes were fake because it is unethical to collect real suicide notes (Ross et al., 1975). After reading the notes, half of the participants were given positive feedback, saying they did well at detecting the real notes, and half were given negative feedback, saying they did poorly (Ross et al., 1975). Ross et al. (1975) found that even after debriefing participants, those in the positive feedback condition still believed they could tell a real suicide note from a fake one in reality, whereas those in the negative feedback condition believed they would do poorly.

 

I have an uncle (whom I love dearly) who deeply enjoys being correct. He is also seldom to believe he is wrong, and will stubbornly stick to his original opinions after anyone disproves them. For example, he believes that Ukraine bombed themselves… not Russia. Trust me, I hear how crazy it sounds. Although I provided him with video evidence and articles with trusted and unbiased sources, he kept to his beliefs. I do not understand his logic, although logic seems to not matter when it comes to the perseverance effect. Another example is my uncle’s thoughts on human evolution. I understand that as a child growing up in the church, you are taught that God made Adam and Eve, and all of humanity came from them. I grew up learning this as well. When discussing the theory that humans evolved from apes or a similar ancestor, which is backed by fairly concrete bone and genetic evidence, my uncle shuts me down immediately. Again, he perfectly demonstrates the perseverance effect by continuing to believe something after being provided with falsifying evidence. I believe that religious beliefs are especially difficult for people to abandon when shown contradictory information. This is largely because no one can definitively prove or disprove the existence of God.

 

Most people enjoy being correct and will stick to their beliefs when they are proven wrong (Ross et al., 1975). Our original beliefs are hard to leave behind once we have them for a while and create several reasons to back them up (Ross et al., 1975). Although the perseverance effect may create challenging conversations, it is a part of human nature. Although I am susceptible to it as well, I will do my best to keep an open mind to new information.

 

References

Ross, L., Lepper, M. R., & Hubbard, M. (1975). Perseverance in self-perception and social perception: Biased attributional processes in the debriefing paradigm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(5), 880-892.  

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I have acted with honesty and integrity in producing this work and am unaware of anyone who has not. – Mara Strohl