Me. Welcome to the You Are Not So Smart Podcast, episode 120. Oh, Last year on this show we did three episodes about the backfire effect and by far

those episodes were the most popular we've ever done.

In fact the famous web comic the oatmeal turned them into a sort of special feature

and that comic of those episodes was shared on Facebook a gazillion times,

which led to stories about the comic in popular media and then more people listen to the

shows and on and on it went. You can see that comic at the oatmeal.com right now at the top of their

page it's titled you are not going to believe what I'm about to tell you.

Now the popularity of the backfire effect extends beyond all of this. It goes right into academia. The

popularity of the Backfire Effect extends beyond all of this. It goes right into academia. The original paper has been cited hundreds of times

across several disciplines and there have been more than 300 articles written about it in the mainstream media.

The Backfire Effect has this special allure to it because on the surface, it just seems to explain

something we've all experienced.

When we argue with someone who believes differently than ourselves,

who sees the world through a different ideological lens,

they often resist our views.

They refuse to accept our way of seeing things,

and it often seems like we do more harm than good because they walk away more entrenched in their beliefs

than before the argument began.

But since those shows last year, researchers have produced a series of new studies into the

backfire effect effect and those studies complicate things.

Yes, we are observing something here and yes we are calling it the backfire effect, but

everything is not exactly as it seems.

...