The article is based on the book «Social Psychology» by David Myers.
After a person mentally creates a rationale for his idea, he parted with it with great difficulty. He has a strong prejudice. This phenomenon, known as the persistence of initial beliefs, proves that conclusions can take on a life of their own, even if the facts on which they were based have already been refuted.
For example, Anderson, Lepper, and Ross asked participants to decide whether good firefighters or bad firefighters would come from people who were risk-averse. One group of subjects considered as an example a risk-taker who worked quite well as a firefighter, and a cautious person who turned out to be a bad firefighter. The second group of subjects considered the opposite situation. After the participants in the experiment formulated their theory about whether good or bad firefighters are made from risky people, they explained in writing why they came to one or another conclusion. For example, some wrote: people who are ready to take risks are brave people. Others argued otherwise: people who are not inclined to take risks act more prudently. And even after the experimenters declared that the situation with the firefighters was completely made up, the participants did not abandon their own explanations and continued to believe that the professionalism of a firefighter really depends (or does not depend) on his propensity to take risks.
“No one denies that people are able to change their beliefs under the influence of new facts. After all, children eventually stop believing in Santa Claus. We only believe that such changes tend to occur very slowly and that it often takes more evidence to change a belief than it does to create one. Lee Ross, Mark Lepper, 1980
Ways to Reduce Prejudice
There are two known methods that successfully reduce the prejudice generated by overconfidence. One of them is immediate feedback. In real life, weather forecasters and race bettors receive daily feedback. Therefore, both of them quite adequately assess the probability of the correctness of their forecasts.
The second way to reduce the level of arrogance is to force a person to come up with at least one reason why their judgments can be false, that is, to force them to take into account the information that refutes their judgments. For example, managers could be much more realistic about their proposals and recommendations if they were sure to indicate the reasons why their proposals might not work.