Facts Don’t Change Our Minds.

In 1975, researchers at Stanford had some undergraduates take part in a study in which they were presented with pairs of suicide notes.

In each pair, one note was written by a person who had subsequently taken his own life, and the other was a fake.The students were then asked to distinguish between the genuine notes and the fake ones.

Some students seemingly showed a genius for the task, while others were hopeless. Then the researchers told the students that the scores were fake..everyone scored about the same percentage of correct answers.

Even though students understood that their scores were fake, afterward, the students who had seemed to score highest on the test said they felt superior to the others, and proud of their work.

Meanwhile, the ones who thought they had failed, continued to feel that they had done poorly.

The facts made little difference once their opinions were set.

[newyorker.com]