Elizabeth Korbert Why Facts Don T Change Our Minds Summary

In Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds, Elizabeth Kolbert explores the idea that even when an individual is presented with a fact, it would do very little to change their overall mindset. In the beginning of this article, Kolbert explains an study of undergraduate students at Stanford University to see if interjecting a fact, post observation, would alter a test groups overall mindset. The students were divided into two groups where they were given 50 suicide notes and asked to determine which noes were real and which were fake. During this observation, one group was assured their choices were correct, whereas the other group was told that their answers were incorrect. After each group categorized their letters, the students were told that the previous statements regarding the validity of their choices was
Using the results of this study, Kolbert was able to show how facts do not play a role in one’s mindset. Similarly, when Steven Sloman, a Brown professor, and Philip Fernbach, a University of Colorado professor, performed a study to determine one’s understanding of common objects, such as toilets, zippers, and locks, they found similar results. Overall, the students displayed the idea of “illusion of explanatory depth” in which they felt they were confident in their understanding of each object’s mechanism based solely on the idea that they have been using these objects for many years. When examining the answers given, one can see that the majority of the individuals did not know the mechanisms behind the common objects. Because of their previous knowledge of daily use, they felt as if they knew the mechanism even though they were told previously that each mechanism is quite complex. Using these two examples, one can see how Kolbert’s idea can be seen as each testing group’s preconceived notions were unhindered by the facts are given to