Why Do we deny the truth

Leon Festinger a celebrated Stanford University psychologist wrote "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." Believe it or not The good professor was referring to his now taught, famous Psychological 1950's Case Study (into a doomsday sect and an alien saviour for the believers of the time known as the Seekers)1 2, so it's hardly new or cutting edge stuff. When their prophecy of the Earth's destruction failed to happen on cue the believers were at first shaken. (The important bit) they began to “justify” the lack of action in terms of because THEIR faith the 'beings upstairs' had decided to spare the earth from destruction . There is one more interesting change that took place, instead continuing their previous keeping to themselves as Festinger put it “ their sense of urgency was enormous”. Whether it was despite or Because of the total failure of what they believed they became far more strident in their views and proselyted aggressively to the point they became social martyrs to their cause. Sound familiar? It should because the similarities with belief structures like Adventism, Scientology, Mormonism, Jonestown “Heaven’s Gate”, Waco's Branch Davidians, Aum Shinrikyo or Anthropomorphic Climate Change (AGW) et al the principals remain the same. All the above have clear evidence of what is known motivated reasoning a product of modern Neuroscience research. The sociologist Andrew Perrin of the University of North Carolina stated that was essentially about starting with a conclusion that one hoped to reach and then selectively evaluating evidence in order to reach that conclusion. Sadly this 'Motivated Reasoning ( read 'motivated JUSTIFICATION') isn't restricted to esoteric issues. The same principal can be seen in everything from 911, racism to vaccines. Neither is it restricted to the intellectually unsophisticated, the uneducated or the plain old 'dumb' (what ever that is). The Political Scientist Arthur Lupia (University of Michigan) has explained it in terms of the subliminal instinct ' fight-or-flight'. This doesn't only apply to predators but also to data i.e. we have a natural predilection more readily accept that information that we are comfortable with and reject that which we don't. The short hand definition for the mechanism is often defined as Conformational Reasoning. This mechanism also helps to explains why people of a particular belief, tribe, village town , country ethnicity etc in terms of the adage 'birds of a feather stick together'. This goes to explain many of their choices like which news paper, TV station , team etc. It is certain that all the above BANK (in both senses of the word) this. They all choose and modify their opinions cater to that demographic... to make them think in terms of We (as in ownership of, defined by). It is important to note that I said predilection not a hard wired absolute. Behavioural psychologist scientists and neuroscientists have developed very strong evidence that our genetics also add to the mix as do variables like Conditioning (nurture ), and circumstances. What also needs to be understood is that Science or reality abhors Absolutes. In other words there are as many variations in the mix as there are people, there simply isn't one size fits all. Science is predicated on statistics (aggregation) of many people and circumstances and can only give a MASS trend or Probability . These are or should be described as a percentage that is from greater than zero and less than 100%, or implicit in any defining conclusions to do other wise is both bad science or BS. In the context of the topic this means one can say that there is a high probability that the above applies to a majority of deniers but it is less sound to define ALL DENIERS . What isn't covered in this blog are those who deliberately use the above factors and the skills of the propagandist, con artists, PR, party politicians and some Businesses et al for selfish personal gain... these I call (professional) denialists .