There was an article in Scientific American how people — and granted I’m sure this study was skewed and it’s a specific, you know, group of people that sign-up for a study — but that when someone was wrong, when someone told them they were wrong, it made them believe their point even more. But if you say to them — and I think that it’s the CIA that uses this as a form of questioning — is that you first have to legitimize their position before you suggest that there might be something flawed about it. So you go like, “I totally understand that you would think that — you know — the earth is flat. I can see why you would have thought that. I mean you grew up here. Of course you thought that.” If you empathize with them first, and then say, “You know, but, turns out it’s round,” they’re more likely to come around. But if you say, “Hey, you know that’s fucking wrong,” and if you show them proof, they double down even further.
Whitney Cummings