The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science

"A MAN WITH A CONVICTION is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point." So wrote the celebrated Stanford University psychologist Leon Festinger, in a passage that might have been referring to climate change denial—the persistent rejection, on the part of so many Americans today, of what we know about global warming and its human causes. But it was too early for that—this was the 1950s—and Festinger was actually describing a famous case study in psychology.
“人的成見是很難改變的。他不會聽取你的不同意見。為他出示事實或圖表，他會要求你提供來源。當你使用邏輯分析時，他就會忽略你的重點。” 史坦福大學著名的心理學家Leon Festinger在一篇文章中這樣寫到。這篇文章看起來似乎與否定氣候變化理論有關——現在很多美國人否定全球氣候變暖及其人為因素。但這篇文章寫於上世紀50年代，對於討論氣候問題來說過於超前。事實上，Festinger那時只是在描述一個心理學個案。

Festinger and several of his colleagues had infiltrated the Seekers, a small Chicago-area cult whose members thought they were communicating with aliens—including one, "Sananda," who they believed was the astral incarnation of Jesus Christ. The group was led by Dorothy Martin, a Dianetics devotee who transcribed the interstellar messages through automatic writing.
Festinger和他的幾個同事研究了芝加哥地區的一個小規模的宗教團體Seekers，它的成員認為他們正在與外星人溝通。其中一個叫“Sananda”的外星人，被認為是耶穌基督在宇宙中的化身。這個團體的領袖是Dorothy Martin，一個戴尼提理論的信徒。她聲稱可以通過在無意識狀態下的書寫來傳達來自宇宙的資訊。

Through her, the aliens had given the precise date of an Earth-rending cataclysm: December 21, 1954. Some of Martin's followers quit their jobs and sold their property, expecting to be rescued by a flying saucer when the continent split asunder and a new sea swallowed much of the United States. The disciples even went so far as to remove brassieres and rip zippers out of their trousers—the metal, they believed, would pose a danger on the spacecraft.
透過她，外星人給出了地球發生災變的具體日期：1954年12月21日。一些Martin的追隨者甚至辭掉了他們的工作、變賣了家產，期待著當大陸裂成碎片，海洋吞噬大片美國土地的災難到來時，會有一艘飛碟來拯救他們。信徒們甚至不戴胸罩，並卸去了褲子上的拉鏈，因為他們相信金屬物體會危及飛碟的飛行安全。

Festinger and his team were with the cult when the prophecy failed. First, the "boys upstairs" (as the aliens were sometimes called) did not show up and rescue the Seekers. Then December 21 arrived without incident. It was the moment Festinger had been waiting for: How would people so emotionally invested in a belief system react, now that it had been soundly refuted?
Festinger和他的團隊與這個教團的成員一起迎接了預言失敗的時刻。第一，外星人沒有出現和拯救信徒；第二，在12月21日也沒有災難發生。這是Festinger一直等待的時刻：當人們全身心投入的一個信仰體系被徹底否定時，人們會有什麼反應？

At first, the group struggled for an explanation. But then rationalization set in. A new message arrived, announcing that they'd all been spared at the last minute. Festinger summarized the extraterrestrials' new pronouncement: "The little group, sitting all night long, had spread so much light that God had saved the world from destruction." Their willingness to believe in the prophecy had saved Earth from the prophecy!
起初，教團努力試圖找到一個解釋。但是很快一個合理化的說法出現了：一個新的資訊傳達到了地球，宣佈他們在最後一分鐘被赦免。Festinger概述了“來自外星”的新信息：“這個教團的成員們靜坐了一夜，傳播了很多光明，因此上帝將世界從毀滅中拯救了出來。”他們對預言的極端信仰竟然反倒從預言中拯救了地球！

From that day forward, the Seekers, previously shy of the press and indifferent toward evangelizing, began to proselytize. "Their sense of urgency was enormous," wrote Festinger. The devastation of all they had believed had made them even more certain of their beliefs.
從那一天之後，那個從前還不願在輿論上露面，而且不熱衷於傳道的團體，開始勸導其他人入教。“他們的危機感非常強。”Festinger寫到。他們的信仰被徹底否定這一事實，反而使他們更加堅定信仰。

In the annals of denial, it doesn't get much more extreme than the Seekers. They lost their jobs, the press mocked them, and there were efforts to keep them away from impressionable young minds. But while Martin's space cult might lie at on the far end of the spectrum of human self-delusion, there's plenty to go around. And since Festinger's day, an array of new discoveries in psychology and neuroscience has further demonstrated how our preexisting beliefs, far more than any new facts, can skew our thoughts and even color what we consider our most dispassionate and logical conclusions. This tendency toward so-called "motivated reasoning" helps explain why we find groups so polarized over matters where the evidence is so unequivocal: climate change, vaccines, "death panels," the birthplace and religion of the president, and much else. It would seem that expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts.
在“否定”的歷史上，還沒有哪一個個案比Seekers更極端。它的信徒丟掉了工作，招致輿論的嘲笑，還要努力維護他們敏感的心靈。但是Martin的太空教團在人類的自欺記錄中可能只能排到非常靠後的位置。還有很多更厲害的記錄。自從Festinger的時代開始以來，一連串在心理學和神經科學領域的新發現，揭示了我們的成見是如何戰勝事實，使我們的思考發生傾斜，甚至影響我們對最客觀理智的結論的看法。這種由“動機導向理性”導致的傾向性，幫助我們解釋了為什麼我們會在一些證據非常明確的事實上走極端，例如氣候變化、疫苗問題、“死亡操作臺”、總統出生地和信仰等等。人們看起來更願意接受比事實先到來的“預期事實”。（注：“死亡操作臺”，即death panels，指的是美國民眾對政府醫療改革不信任，堅持認為政府是要通過醫改來掌握大眾生死大權）

The theory of motivated reasoning builds on a key insight of modern neuroscience : Reasoning is actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call "affect"). Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, in a matter of milliseconds—fast enough to detect with an EEG device, but long before we're aware of it. That shouldn't be surprising: Evolution required us to react very quickly to stimuli in our environment. It's a "basic human survival skill," explains political scientist Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan. We push threatening information away; we pull friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself.
動機導向理性理論建立在現代神經科學的一個關鍵知識上：理性總是被感性污染（研究者們通常稱之為“影響”）。感性和理性是不可分的，而且我們對人、對事、對觀點的好惡直覺，比我們的有意識思考來得更快——只是在毫秒之間，這種速度只能用腦電圖檢測到，而當我們意識到（“這只是直覺”）時已經很晚了。這種現象並不奇怪：進化要求我們對於環境刺激做出快速的反應。這是“人類求生本能”——密執安大學政治科學家Arthur Lupia解釋道。我們遠離危險的資訊，接近友好的資訊。“或戰或逃”不只是針對於捕食者，對外來資訊也是一樣。

We're not driven only by emotions, of course—we also reason, deliberate. But reasoning comes later, works slower—and even then, it doesn't take place in an emotional vacuum. Rather, our quick-fire emotions can set us on a course of thinking that's highly biased, especially on topics we care a great deal about.
操縱我們的不只是情緒，當然還有理智和謹慎。但是理性到來得較晚，起效也更慢，而且它要佔領的並不是感性的真空地帶。而我們瞬間的感性，將很容易把我們引入偏見。特別是在我們關注的話題上。

Consider a person who has heard about a scientific discovery that deeply challenges her belief in divine creation—a new hominid, say, that confirms our evolutionary origins. What happens next, explains political scientist Charles Taber of Stony Brook University, is a subconscious negative response to the new information—and that response, in turn, guides the type of memories and associations formed in the conscious mind. "They retrieve thoughts that are consistent with their previous beliefs," says Taber, "and that will lead them to build an argument and challenge what they're hearing."
想像一下，當一個人聽說科學家發現了一種確定是我們進化起源的古人類——這個深度挑戰她原本的神創論信仰的新發現時，她會作何反應。Stony Brook University的社會科學家Charles　Taber解釋說：首先在潛意識中會對這個新資訊產生抵觸，然後這種“抵觸”領導了記憶和聯繫方式在顯意識中的構建。“他們會自動收集符合自己成見的想法，”Taber說，“這會導致他們對其所聽到的東西進行質疑和反駁。”

In other words, when we think we're reasoning, we may instead be rationalizing. Or to use an analogy offered by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt: We may think we're being scientists, but we're actually being lawyers. Our "reasoning" is a means to a predetermined end—winning our "case"—and is shot through with biases. They include "confirmation bias," in which we give greater heed to evidence and arguments that bolster our beliefs, and "disconfirmation bias," in which we expend disproportionate energy trying to debunk or refute views and arguments that we find uncongenial.
也就是說，當我們認同自己的理智時，我們可能只是在使自己的想法“合理化”而已。或者引用一句University of Virginia心理學家Jonathan Haid的比喻：我們自認為是科學家，但事實上我們只是律師。我們的“理性”是針對一個預定目標的——打贏我們的官司——而且充滿了偏見。它包括“確認偏向”——我們對支持我們信念的證據和觀點更在意，以及“不確認偏向”——我們花費相對較少的精力在揭穿和反駁我們感覺不正常的現象和觀點上。

That's a lot of jargon, but we all understand these mechanisms when it comes to interpersonal relationships. If I don't want to believe that my spouse is being unfaithful, or that my child is a bully, I can go to great lengths to explain away behavior that seems obvious to everybody else—everybody who isn't too emotionally invested to accept it, anyway. That's not to suggest that we aren't also motivated to perceive the world accurately—we are. Or that we never change our minds—we do. It's just that we have other important goals besides accuracy—including identity affirmation and protecting one's sense of self—and often those make us highly resistant to changing our beliefs when the facts say we should.
這裏有很多術語，但是我們都理解它在人際關係中的作用機制。如果我不願意相信自己的妻子不忠，或者不願意相信自己的孩子會欺負人，那麼我會花大量時間為在其他人看來很明顯的行為辯護，讓不太情緒化的人接受我的解釋。但這並不意味著我們不鼓勵正確地認識這個世界——事實上我們鼓勵這樣做；這也不是說我們從未改變過自己的想法——事實上我們會改變。只是我們在“正確”之外還有更重要的目的——包括尋求個體認同和對自我認知的保護——這些經常使我們在事實要求我們改變信仰時說“不”。

Originated :
The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science | Mother Jones
Studying the Brain Can Help Us Understand : The New Yorker