It is often claimed that humans are good at essentially tricking ourselves into believing things that would be beneficial to believe (regardless of evidence). E.g. from this recent New Yorker article newyorker.com/magazine/2024/… Does anyone know what the actual evidence for this is?
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@GordPennycook Are you asking about stuff like this? aeaweb.org/articles?id=10… @EgonTripodi @page_eco has a similar paper too...
@d_f_stone @EgonTripodi @page_eco I don't really see that as self-deception, though. It's possible (or likely) that the exercise of forming an argument for a position helps people think about counterevidence, hence why their views change. If anything, this provides the opposite pattern of results as argued above