Fact Resistance: When Research Results Conflict with Beliefs
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Fri, Jul 16, 2010
Every researcher has their story of the time the client or end user ignored the research results. Such stories are especially common when the results contradict sacred cows. In his post, Don’t Conduct Focus Groups without Senior Executives in Attendance, Brian Koma relates one such story, from his days with Strategem Marketing:
We now had information that could provide the client with unique insights into the thinking of executive-level decision makers in a key market. What was striking about these results was that they contradicted many of the client’s long-held beliefs about how university executives felt about key issues – and we now had solid proof that our client needed to address these issues in their positioning and long-term product planning.
Unfortunately, those executives did not believe the research results. In fact, they disagreed with the results so strongly that they canceled their contract with Strategem!
Usually researchers try to explain away such occurrences as being caused by internal politics, but a growing body of research suggests that human brains are “fact resistant”. Just as market researchers need to understand the human psychology of research participants, they need to understand the psychology of those being presented the research.
Last Sunday’s Boston Globe features the article, “How facts backfire: Researchers discover a surprising threat to democracy--our brains” by Joe Keohane:
Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.
…What’s going on? How can we have things so wrong, and be so sure that we’re right? Part of the answer lies in the way our brains are wired. Generally, people tend to seek consistency. There is a substantial body of psychological research showing that people tend to interpret information with an eye toward reinforcing their preexisting views. If we believe something about the world, we are more likely to passively accept as truth any information that confirms our beliefs, and actively dismiss information that doesn’t. This is known as “motivated reasoning.” Whether or not the consistent information is accurate, we might accept it as fact, as confirmation of our beliefs. This makes us more confident in said beliefs, and even less likely to entertain facts that contradict them.
When presenting results that conflict with executives’ understanding of their market, how should a researcher proceed?
- Present results one-on-one. Brendan Nyhan, with the University of Michigan, has conducted experiments where one group was given a self-affirmation exercise before being presented with data. Compared to the control group, they were more receptive to the facts. Feelings of being insecure or threatened make it hard to accept contradictory new information. For market researchers, it may be better to present the most controversial findings in one-on-one settings, where executives do not need to worry about managing the perceptions of their peers.
- Let recipients see that others believe as they do. At last year’s AMA Marketing Research Conference, Jack Wakshlag, chief research officer of TimeWarner/Turner Broadcasting, gave an example of using research to bust the myth of “appointment viewing” (the belief that, because program ratings don't change much from day to day or week to week, shows are watched by the same core group of viewers). Rather than simply present the research, prior to meeting, Jack first surveyed programmers and marketing staff about how many episodes out of 10 they expected were watched by individuals for many shows (e.g., Sopranos watchers viewed 4.5 out of 10 episodes). When the staff could see that their own beliefs were echoed by their coworkers, they could be comfortable that they weren’t alone in being wrong when shown the actually data. (See Why Your Management Doesn’t Listen to You Like You Think They Should for more details.)
- Spin the results as mainly meeting expectations, with an important caveat. Diane Hagglund of Dimensional Research relates the story of a client who expected a major international market to differ dramatically from their domestic market. In fact, the markets were highly similar, but Diane led with the relatively unimportant differences first, before discussing the similarities.
Getting clients to act on research data is hard enough under normal circumstances, let alone when those findings contradict long-held beliefs. Yet it is precisely in those cases where action is most important.
How have you helped controversial findings to be accepted?