Sometimes people spend a lot of cognitive effort in order to NOT update the model of the world they have in their heads.
It's a useful skill to recognise when your brain is doing this.
The problem is that it's difficult to recognise a mental action, much less describe one.
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On the bright side, there are really only 7 ways you can react to inconvenient data:
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2/ In 1993, Clark Chinn and William Brewer published a famous paper on how science students react to anomalous data — data that clashed with their mental models of the world.
They then drew on the history of science to show how common these reactions are amongst scientists.
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(This tweet brought to you by my realising how difficult it is to describe “you know that mental feeling when your walls go up and you start digging your heels in, and your brain starts to concoct all sorts of arguments to reject ‘evidence’?” Yeah, that feeling.)
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My flag for checking for this is asking: have I changed the first piece of evidence that I’d offer to defend this position? If you’ve really found a better piece of evidence then cool, but if you’ve moved back to a secondary piece of evidence then not so much.
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Often people glimpse a flaw / error but sadly don’t know how to correct their models in useful ways.
Add to that people who may accurately point to problems / errors / flaws ‘in others’ but not have a useful way forwards to offer.
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Maybe the reason why people do not update their models is because the models are invisible to them...
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More from @ri_cook, summarizing work by L. Bainbridge on verbal reports:
"You do not have access to your own mental processing. The fact that mental processing is happening in your head does not mean that you, as a person, have privileged access to your mental processing." 1/5
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