Backfire Effect

The backfire effect is a proposed phenomenon in which being shown evidence that contradicts a belief, rather than correcting the belief, causes a person to hold that belief even more strongly. The idea grew out of research on belief perseverance, the general tendency for a belief to persist despite contradicting evidence, which the philosopher F. C. S. Schiller regarded as significant enough to rank among basic natural laws. Later and more extensive research has substantially undermined the original claim: a 2020 review documented widespread failures to replicate a genuine backfire effect even under conditions designed to favor it, and most researchers examining the question now conclude that a true backfire effect, if it occurs at all, is rare and confined to narrow circumstances rather than a general feature of how people respond to correction. For the general population, fact-checking and corrections typically produce neutral or modestly positive shifts toward accuracy rather than a negative backfire, and Brendan Nyhan, one of the researchers whose early work helped popularize the idea, has since attributed the persistence of misinformation to other factors instead.