 Now, given those examples we saw about attributing random negative events to a curse or something like that and attributing random positive events to a magic pill or something like that, once you've made that false connection, that faulty connection, it would be really hard to sort of unsee it, right? You experienced it. You saw that when you were sick and you took this, you got better. You saw that when you took an exam and then you did this, you did worse, right? That experience is real and I do this myself. Once I see that connection, it's very hard for me to change my opinion if somebody tells me that that is not operating. That's right. That's exactly right. I think with opinion change, as we said before, it's not enough just to say that people like their own opinions or something like that and instead it's really important to figure out why people are so resistant to opinion change. The intellectual reasons, the cognitive reasons, the machinery, the processes that are operating for that resistance to opinion change and we're going to talk about those in a second but I think it's worth making it more concrete. Let's give an example. I've used this before in some of the classes I've taught and we ask people, imagine yourself given the choice between a large class, between taking a class with 500, 1,000 people sitting in this giant lecture hall watching a professor or taking a small class, say 20 people with a lecturer standing in the front giving the same sort of thing. Which would you prefer? Most people in that sort of context would say that they would prefer the small class as opposed to the large class. You'll learn more, you'll get more interaction and all this stuff. That's right. As we talked about in episode five, you'll learn more. You'll retain it for longer if you're in a smaller class than you're in a larger class. Again, going back to episode five, in that conversation with John Dunlowski, I asked him about the difference between a large and a small class. Here's what he had to say. A lot of students think that there's a real benefit to small classes over large classes. We all have experience in sitting in lecture halls, massive 500 people in a lecture hall versus an intimate 20 people in a lecture hall. Is there any evidence that we like to think that small classes are substantially better than large classes? It seems intuitive that they would be right because you get more attention potentially from your teachers and so forth. There's quite a bit of evidence, actually, enough evidence to do meta-analysis after meta-analysis. It turns out that the relationship between class size and student achievement really is really small. In fact, it's almost nonsignificant in many cases, which is startling that it would be that way. In fact, smaller classes aren't necessarily better. As John just said, there's this experiment of the difference between a large and a small class and the learning outcomes that result. That's been done literally hundreds of times. There has been roughly half of the experiments coming out in favor of a small class and roughly half of the experiments that have been done come out in favor of a large class or no difference between them whatsoever. With this as a background, I use this example in my class with my students and I ask them, what do you prefer? As I said, they say I prefer a small class. I say, okay, now, I'm going to give you a whole bunch of money. Imagine I'm in a position where I have a heap of research funds and I give them as much money as they need. I want them to test the difference between a large class and a small class. Design the experiment. They do. They design this elaborate sort of experiment they say, and so we've learned a fair bit about the experimental method. They say things like, well, we have to control as much as possible. You need the person at the front of the class to be exactly in front of the large class to be the same person in front of the small class. Maybe record them. Let's video record the person in the two classes and see being an audience member in the large class and being an audience member in the small class, all things being equal, who's going to learn more? And they design this very elaborate experiment. And then I actually give them the punch line and I say, okay, this experiment that you've proposed has been done. It's been done a thousand times and there has been no difference whatsoever. Now then I take another poll and say, okay, students, now how many of you are willing to change your mind? If I gave you the option of taking a large class and a small class now, how many people are going to take the small class and how many people are going to take the large class? And there is no change. People who decided, the vast majority of them, if not all of them, say I'd take the small class, are still willing to take the small class despite the fact that I said this experiment has been done hundreds of times, despite the fact that there's no evidence to suggest that there's a difference between them. And why? And this is it. I mean, given this overwhelming evidence against the difference between large and small classes, people just will not waver. And then I ask them, okay, well, why? Why won't you change your mind? Why would you still continue to take a small class as opposed to a large? And they say, well, I don't know. I like them better. Okay, well, or I don't like the experiment that you propose. You designed the experiment, right? You're the one. That's why I have them do it because they're committed. And yet there just doesn't seem to be any difference. And this is the nature of the problem. I mean, we're using a fairly benign example about small classes and large classes, but we're going to see it come out again and again. When we talk about extraordinary claims, ESP and things, when we present evidence to people that doesn't consist with their worldview, what do they do in the face of this new evidence? And when we ask those students to take it to the next level, to reflect on why people are reluctant to change their minds, they tend to give motivational explanations. They're like, well, people don't like to look stupid in front of their friends and family, like change in their mind, you know, makes them look, you know, intellectually weak or something like that. But those motivational examples aren't enough. We need to focus on the cognitive, the intellectual explanations for why it's so difficult to change your mind. And I think there's two things going on. The first is it's called source amnesia. We have difficulty remembering why it is we believe something. And think about this. What makes you think you have access that you can instantly recall the exact basis for why you read, why you believe something? Oh, yep, I read this paper that found this effect, or I remember doing really well in a small class and not in a large class. In 1987. Yeah, my memory is that good, I'm just pulling it all and that's why I believe it. So that source amnesia, that difficulty in remembering is one of the factors that makes it hard to change your mind. The second thing that makes it difficult to change minds is it's hard to reconcile what it is you believed previously with this new data. And again, that's cognitively difficult. You've got this new evidence that's come in and you have your former belief. That takes some work to put those two things together. It can't be done in the heat of the moment. You have to do some work. It might take days. It might take weeks for you to reconcile this new information with your previous belief. So those are the two things that I think make it difficult for people, for us, to change our opinions. So it's not enough to say that people are silly to give these motivational explanations. We have to look at why it's difficult to change minds. So evidence alone is not enough to change minds. You need evidence plus a good story. You need to show people what they can change their minds to. That's right. Going back to the large class, small class difference, for example. I would have been extremely surprised if I asked my students after just presenting a couple papers or on my authority to say that, now, there's no difference between a large and a small class. If they just spun on a dime right there and said, OK, I'll take a large class instead of a small class, I would have been astonished if they would have done that. And for exactly the right reasons, I think, as you said, it takes work. It takes an enormous amount of effort to reconcile the information, this new wealth of evidence that they've just been exposed to. How do you integrate that with a lifetime of experience? It's really difficult. And so we're going to help, I think. Next, we're going to talk about six leads of opinion change. Now these are things that students in the course can use when they're encountering new evidence that contradicts a belief that they hold dear. So for themselves or for other people, and I've done this myself, these are really useful tools to be able to say, OK, well, here's something I believe. This is a belief that I hold dear. And I've just been presented with evidence that completely obliterates what I had thought was true. Now, what do I do about that? So what are some of these six leads that we can deal with?