How do people form opinions, and why are they so hard to break?

People seem to cling to their opinions very much, even though they are losing a discussion, even though they cannot produce any reasonable arguments for their opinion, even when they are left slinging insults at their opponent because they have nothing better to say, even then most people won't abandon their opinion. Is it because of pride? I don't think so, it seems people actually believe in their opinion no matter what. Be it left-wingers or right-wingers, religionists or atheists, they will not waiver!

So if reason is not what causes us to believe things and form opinions, what does? Is it because of upbringing? I don't know about that, because I know several who have been brought up in a Christian home and left their faith, and likewise people have grown up in atheist homes and found faith.

Maybe it is experience that matters most, people seem to weigh personal experience stronger than sound logical arguments. Maybe society drills a lot of norms into us, personally I believe that alot of people are STRONGLY influenced by society and that their opinions are not as personal as they think.

So what do you think? How do people form opinions? And why are they so hard to break?

Because people are stubborn little things that hate being proven wrong. Even when it's obvious to everyone that they've been beaten or their point as been overturned, it's a rare person who will admit defeat.

I'm not one of those rare people. But I'm honest enough to admit it.

Pride. Even though you don't know my name or address and may never meet me, I can't let you win. Often it's from personal experience. Other times people just like arguing better than agreeing.

People believe in their opinions. "Losing" an arguement is usually subjective. However, often, people are simply outnumbered, and they are assumed to have "lost." Other times, people cannot find references for their valid statistics. People rarely change their minds because they have been out-argued.

Elrohir said:

Because people are stubborn little things that hate being proven wrong. Even when it's obvious to everyone that they've been beaten or their point as been overturned, it's a rare person who will admit defeat.

I'm not one of those rare people. But I'm honest enough to admit it.

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So you're still the proud American who will rather die than admit there were no WMD's in Iraq

Winner said:

So you're still the proud American who will rather die than admit there were no WMD's in Iraq

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And you're still the proud European who thinks the EU is going to lead the world out of the dark ages.

Homie said:

Maybe it is experience that matters most, people seem to weigh personal experience stronger than sound logical arguments. Maybe society drills a lot of norms into us, personally I believe that alot of people are STRONGLY influenced by society and that their opinions are not as personal as they think.

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I do weigh personal experience very, very heavily. What I have experienced is far more important than any high sounding argument could be. Experience is the strongest logical argument there is.

I also agree that many people are sheep and go with the societal flow. Others may form opinions just to go against the flow, but that is being a sheep also (just doing the opposite).

Selective reading, also, has something to do with it. History is full of examples of successes and failures for every imaginable reason. I can pick and choose examples that prove my point while ignoring those that would disprove it. Everyone does this. Studying history with an opinion already planted will only serve to carve the opinion deeper into yourself.

A'AbarachAmadan said:

I also agree that many people are sheep and go with the societal flow. Others may form opinions just to go against the flow, but that is being a sheep also (just doing the opposite).

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Very true. One should disagree with the majority if one thinks they are wrong, not because it is cool to "go against the flow", to be a revolutionist.

Many people on this thread says that it is about pride, I disagree. I get the feeling that people actually believe what they say, even when they have been proven wrong, they just figure "There must be an explanation, I just haven't found it yet" and they honestly still believe their opinion is accurate. This is my experience. Maybe there is the EXCEPTION where one is a stubborn fool who sees he is wrong but won't admit it out of pride, but I haven't met many such people even on forums.

Homie, your basic assumptions are flawed. You seem to treat "an opinion" as some kind of tangible piece of property that one can "have". It is not so.
Every person, from the very moment of birth, observes the world around them and interacts with it in order to try and understand it. Most of this understanding is at very basic, subconscious levels, however some of it, the very tip of the iceberg, is conscious thought, and some fraction of that is on an intellectual level. It seems these "opinions" you refer to are the intellectual fraction of conscious thought.
However, being a part of a persons integral world-view, these "opinions" are as dear to that person as life itself. Life without understanding is no life at all. If we do not feel we understand how the world works and how we can interact with it, we feel we have nothing. This is probably one of the reasons shocking discoveries have a tendancy to "break" a person.
All that said, a person can change their conscious understanding of the world, and to some degree the unconscious as well. It's just the nature of arguments that you will not back down while on the defense as well as while on the offense. Often people will later rework their world view in a way that takes into account things they got thrown at them in an argument.
It's natural that while a viewpoint is yours you will want to defend it fiercely. Our basic, subconscious assumption, is that if a lot of people agree with us things will be better for us and we'll feel more secure about our beliefs.

What Irish said. And some of what Blasphemous said too. But why do people from seemingly similar backgrounds come to opposing opinions? I think personality has something to do with it. Whether you are biologically predisposed to be optimistic or depressive, for example.

Mind-changing isn't nearly as bad as it's cracked up to be, though. Understanding is vital, but you can change one understanding for another without getting lost. It does get a little tedious when you have to change your mind back to something you had once discarded, though

I believe you will find this very interesting. Its all to do with what the author calls "anti-proccesses" or effectively head thickness enlargement.

http://members.aol.com/intwg/antiprocess.htm

Courtessy of a link within a link in Knight-Dragon's Sig.

Meleager said:

http://members.aol.com/intwg/antiprocess.htm

Courtessy of a link within a link in Knight-Dragon's Sig.

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Interesting. Seems to me there are work-arounds to "antiprocess", although you have to be experienced with a particular debate to use them. For example, a Socratic method type trick ... where you get someone to agree to various innocuous seeming premises, and hold off with the surprising conclusion until it's very hard to avoid.

Meleager said:

I believe you will find this very interesting. Its all to do with what the author calls "anti-proccesses" or effectively head thickness enlargement.

http://members.aol.com/intwg/antiprocess.htm

Courtessy of a link within a link in Knight-Dragon's Sig.

Click to expand...

Ayatollah So said:

Interesting. Seems to me there are work-arounds to "antiprocess", although you have to be experienced with a particular debate to use them. For example, a Socratic method type trick ... where you get someone to agree to various innocuous seeming premises, and hold off with the surprising conclusion until it's very hard to avoid.

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I've done that before, and although it's obviously always possible that I just wasn't making a good argument, I'd have to say that no, that method isn't much more effective.

Some areas (religion, politics) may just be too well defended by psychological defense mechanisms. But I did once get my wife to concede that the dishwasher should be loaded from the back to the front, which she had doubted, by getting her first to consider what's the most efficient way to unload the dishwasher when it's full and done.

WillJ said:

I've done that before, and although it's obviously always possible that I just wasn't making a good argument, I'd have to say that no, that method isn't much more effective.

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ditto.

The article posted was informative, but I am still left with 1 question:

1. Why would the brain put up defense mechanisms at all? What is so bad about abondoning one's belief system if it does not have any consequences in life? Why don't we just don't go "OK, I was wrong. Good news, now I know the truth, woohoo".

@Homie - Because it may well have some consequences in life, or they may be afraid that it will have. Would somebody want to think "OK I was thinking something completely idiotic for 90% of my life, look how clever I am for having changed ... but I was very idiotic, how can I tell I'm not still"? Or they may lose friends who still think that way. If there are no consequences at all to the change, how is it a change? I think it's very difficult to find any belief system the changing of which would not have any negative consequences. Smokers may honestly believe that their health will not suffer from smoking; people who say that there is no form of evolution at all may honestly believe that if an organism can change then this makes God look silly.

Indeed, losing a part of your world-view can be very negative, even life-threatening, which would explain from the evolutionary standpoint why we developed these defenses along with the rest of our complex human psyche.
A couple years ago, when I suddenly realized the frightening consequence of my atheism - that there is no such thing as objective importance or meaning - I was very very depressed, for a couple of weeks. I felt lost, confused, and disoriented. It was a very real mental equivelant of severe dizziness. There I was, over a decade gone by with my basic, hardly concious belief that things had some real meaning, and suddenly I realize there was no basis for that belief in the first place. It really got me wondering why I should bother to live.
The final conclusion, was that there is no objective reason to live but I might as well since it's fun sometime, and nothing matters so I can just ignore the bad once it's over...
I will not deny that the whole ordeal was, in the end, a positive experience that has made me incredibly strong, but it did threaten my life on the way there and I can understand why resistance to that kind of change would be selected for.

They are hard to break because your on the internet. You'll find that people are a lot more easily convinced face to face. in fact, when you have some kind of charisma, you can convinced many people of about anything you want.

This thread is stupid, and im not listening to any arguements proving me wrong!
Oh, and i would put it down mainly to pride. People dont like backing down or being proven they are wrong, even on internet forums where 90% of us will never meet, we still dont like to admit we are wrong to a total stranger.