Debunker - Backfire Effects

Backfire Effects

Australian Professorial Fellow Stephan Lewandowsky and John Cook, Climate Communication Fellow for the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland (and author at SkepticalScience.com) both warn about "backfire effects" in their Debunking Handbook. Backfire effects occur when science communicators accidentally reinforce false beliefs by trying to correct them. For instance, a speaker about global warming may end up reinforcing the crowd's beliefs that global warming is not happening.

Cook and Lewandowsky offer possible solutions to the backfire effects as described in different psychological studies. They recommend spending little or no time describing misconceptions because people cannot help but remember ideas that they have heard before. They write "Your goal is to increase people's familiarity with the facts." Cook and Lewandowsky also recommend providing fewer and clearer arguments, considering that more people recall a message when it is simpler and easier to read. "Less is more" is especially important because scientific truths can get overwhelmingly detailed; pictures, graphs, and memorable tag lines all help keep things simple.

The two authors believe that debunkers should try to build up people's egos in some way before confronting false beliefs because it is difficult to consider ideas that threaten one's worldviews (i.e., threatening ideas cause cognitive dissonance). It can even help to avoid words with negative connotations. Finally, Cook and Lewandowsky describe studies that people abhor incomplete explanations – the two write "In the absence of a better explanation, opt for the wrong explanation". It is important to fill in conceptual gaps, and to explain the cause of the misconception in the first place. The authors believe these techniques can reduce the odds of a "backfire" – that an attempt to debunk bad science will increase the audience's belief in misconceptions.