30. The More Uncertain People Are, The More They Defend Their Ideas

30

• THE MORE UNCERTAIN PEOPLE
• ARE,
• THE MORE THEY DEFEND
• THEIR IDEAS

ALTER OUR BELIEFS OR DENY THE INFORMATION?

• "Cognitive dissonance is the uncomfortable feeling you get when you have two ideas that conflict with each other. You don’t like the feeling, so you’ll try to get rid of the dissonance. There are two main ways you can do that: change your belief, or deny one of the ideas."

Slide 3

• When forced, people will change their beliefs
• People were forced to defend an
• opinion that they did not believe in. The result was that people tended to change their
• beliefs to fit the new idea.
• >> The best way to change a belief is to get someone to commit to something very small.
• When not forced, people dig in
• The tendency is to deny the new information instead of changing your belief to fit.
• >> Don't spend a lot of time trying to change someone’s ingrained beliefs.
• If uncertain, people will argue harder
• When people were less certain, they
• would dig in and argue even harder.
• >> Don’t just give people evidence that their belief is not logical, or tenable, or a good choice. This may backfire and make them dig in even harder.