No matter who you are, you've likely spent some amount of time
arguing online with someone you just couldn't believe was
incapable of accepting the truth. That may have been because
they were susceptible to something called the backfire effect,
or so were you. According to author David McRaney's post on the
subject, we have a tendency to believe things even more when our
beliefs are challenged. The basic idea comes from how we handle
negative information versus positive information: A thousand
positive remarks can slip by unnoticed, but one "you suck" can
linger in your head for days. One hypothesis as to why this and
the backfire effect happens is that you spend much more time
considering information you disagree with than you do
information you accept. Information which lines up with what you
already believe passes through the mind like a vapor, but when
you come across something which threatens your beliefs,
something which conflicts with your preconceived notions of how
the world works, you seize up and t