Belief Perseverance

Belief perseverance, also known as conceptual conservatism, is the maintenance of a belief despite new information that firmly contradicts it. Because rationality requires conceptual flexibility, belief perseverance is consistent with the view that human beings act irrationally at times; the philosopher F.C.S. Schiller held that it deserves to rank among the fundamental laws of nature. When a belief actually strengthens after someone attempts to present contradicting evidence, the result is known as a backfire effect, though a 2020 review of the scientific literature found widespread failure to replicate genuine backfire effects even under conditions that should favor them, so that most researchers now believe true backfire effects are rare or nonexistent at the population level; for most people, corrections and fact-checking are unlikely to backfire at all.