My roommate is back to her crazy self. Whatever happened to the sweet and lonely girl from the end of last semester is a mystery to me. Jill is back to drinking, partying, and sleeping around and we've only been here for a couple of weeks. Apparently, she is still obsessing about Alex because she woke me up one night and said, "I had a dream you and Alex hooked up. How could you do this to me?" "You woke me up at 3:20 am to tell me about your psycho dreams? Am I supposed to apologize, because you are a nut case? " I really wasn't happy she woke me up. I've had a bit too much for such a short time of being here after Christmas break. JT and I met for lunch and he took my hand in his while we were talking. So confusing when I'm trying to figure out if Mike and I are right for each other. To make the matters more complicated, there is that really hot guy in my Theater class, Luis. He is like... too hot, hot in an intimidating kind of way, hot as in "don't touch the stove" kind of way. When I sit close to him, I feel energy between us... so weird... I wonder if he feels the same.
"Research on how people react to belief-contradicting information abounds in the psychological literature, and there are certain response patterns that tend to show up, when our beliefs are being challenged:
* We look for flaws in the new information,
* seek information that bolsters our original attitude,
* garner for social validation of our original attitude,
* begin derogating the source of the message,
* show signs of anger and discomfort, avoid the new message altogether,
* or simply assert our confidence in the initial belief more adamantly.
Although typical responses to belief challenging information have been shown for various groups of beliefs and for different sources of information, there is an understanding that people select from available resistance strategies based on how important the issue is to them. The closer the issue is to your heart, the more resistance you put up. It also matters how knowledgeable you are about the issue in general and how socially desirable the resistance strategy is. If you're an environmentalist and Sarah Palin provides you with information on why drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is a good idea you might choose "derogating the source" and dismiss her as an idiot (as that may be generally socially desirable among your social peer group), but if Barack Obama informs you about the benefits of offshore drilling you might opt for politely "looking for flaws in the new information."
The above listed mechanisms don't really work that well when it comes to information that is provided through scientific research. It is also not that easy to counter-argue scientific evidence or to point out a study's methodological flaws, because as laypeople really we often don't understand the methods well enough. Even if we do, more often than not, we are presented the sexed up "evidence" without the methods that produced them.
So what do people do? Lie down, roll over and accept that science has proven their stereotypes to be wrong? Unlikely, so here's how we chose to lie to ourselves:
The resistance strategy to belief-contradicting scientific evidence might just be to claim scientific impotence; the inability of science to address the area of knowledge being challenged.
In many ways scientific impotence - or rather people's strategy of claiming scientific impotence when information contradicts their world views - is the most important reason why scientific evidence often remains ineffective in changing people's understanding of the world around them. Science can tell you about the evolution of life on earth, but you don't want to hear it. And science can inform you on a whole range of moral topics, but this is also something many people don't want to hear. We are selective in what we choose to believe." - Psychology Today
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