[marginalium]
Culture trumps evidence
20 Feb 2025
Culture trumps evidence:
Beliefs may withstand the pressure of disconfirming events not because of the effectiveness of dissonance-reducing strategies, but because disconfirming evidence may simply go unacknowledged
A rebuttal to the classic ‘cognitive dissonance’ account of why believers continue to believe after the failure of a prophecy. In this case, the culture makes the failure less salient. One wonders whether this kind of surrender to a culture that protects you from dissonance is not simply another mechanism for reducing cognitive dissonance.
Anthologies: Connection, Spiritual Architecture, Successful Prophets, Psychologia, On Thinking and Reasoning