Abstract
People often discount evidence that contradicts their firmly held beliefs. However, little is known about the neural mechanisms that govern this behavior. We used neuroimaging to investigate the neural systems involved in maintaining belief in the face of counterevidence, presenting 40 liberals with arguments that contradicted their strongly held political and non-political views. Challenges to political beliefs produced increased activity in the default mode network—a set of interconnected structures associated with self-representation and disengagement from the external world. Trials with greater belief resistance showed increased response in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and decreased activity in the orbitofrontal cortex. We also found that participants who changed their minds more showed less BOLD signal in the insula and the amygdala when evaluating counterevidence. These results highlight the role of emotion in belief-change resistance and offer insight into the neural systems involved in belief maintenance, motivated reasoning, and related phenomena.
Highlights
Few things are as fundamental to human progress as our ability to arrive at a shared understanding of the world
There was no difference between belief strength in the follow-up compared to during the fMRI scan for political statements (0.12 ± 0.06, t(33) = 1.83, p = 0.076), there was a difference between belief strength in the follow-up compared to during the fMRI scan for non-political statements (0.51 ± 0.13, t(33) = 4.07, p < 0.001)
Processing challenges to political beliefs was associated with relatively increased activity in regions of the default mode network (DMN), including the precuneus, the posterior cingulate cortex, the medial prefrontal cortex, the inferior parietal lobe, and the anterior temporal lobe
Summary
Few things are as fundamental to human progress as our ability to arrive at a shared understanding of the world. Data on any topic—from climate science to epidemiology—must first be successfully communicated and believed before it can inform personal behavior or public policy Viewed in this light, the inability to change another person’s mind through evidence and argument, or to have one’s own mind changed in turn, stands out as a problem of great societal importance. The inability to change another person’s mind through evidence and argument, or to have one’s own mind changed in turn, stands out as a problem of great societal importance Both human knowledge and human cooperation depend upon such feats of cognitive and emotional flexibility. Beliefs that relate to one’s social identity are likely to be more difficult to change[16,17,18,19] Based on this model, predictions can be made about the neural systems that govern resistance to belief change. While the non-political beliefs were just as strongly held according to the participants who held them, we did not expect these beliefs to be defended with the same vigor
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