We Shouldn’t Dismiss People Who Deny Facts

It’s easy to dismiss people who believe things that are factually incorrect–that vaccines cause autism, for example, or that climate change isn’t real. But if we really want to change how they think, we need to take an honest look at what’s driving those beliefs. Because it’s not ignorance, it’s psychology.

All of us are prone to the same fundamental human principles that cause these cases of scientific denial. Research has proven that humans are distinctly uncomfortable with events or phenomena without clear causes, and when we don’t know something, we tend to fill in the gaps ourselves. Take autism. Since we don’t know why it occurs, it becomes easy to misplace blame. Moreover, humans do not assess risk in a measured or rational manner. Instead, we often conjure an image of a scenario in our minds. Because we are fundamentally empathetic creatures, we respond more to stories than to statistics. That’s precisely what makes it more natural for antivaxxers to “imagine” the risk of their children dying from a vaccine than it is for them to comprehend statistics that say otherwise.

Rather than chastising people for focusing so heavily on stories, we should figure out why we are all so drawn to stories in the first place. Changing minds requires compassion and understanding, not disdain.

The Gormans are the authors of Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore the Facts That Will Save Us