Psychology paper :D

Paige Green.

Ms. Seltzer

Psychology Section.

Pd 5.

How the Exposure to Unconventional Ideas Throughout Life Affects Belief in Disproving Evidence.

            People that have been raised to believe certain ideas will strive to create reasons why the information is blasphemous or not accurate. The reasons why include the fact that people have too much value in pride and because the information may be so important that they may think that they are losing a sense of self by losing credibility in the information. For example, if a scientist finds evidence that disproves that the Earth orbits the Sun, most people would say that it was a truly ridiculous statement, and that he was misreading the facts. They will say that he didn’t do his research correctly and that his tests were done inaccurately, when if somebody had not been raised to know that the Earth orbits the Sun, they could look at the information rationally and see that the facts disproved the original theory.

            Another instance is if a person has a strong belief in a certain religion and a scientist finds concrete evidence disproving the religion’s teachings, a reason that the person will make excuses to why the facts are incorrect is that the person will have become accustomed to thinking in the way of the religion, so they will make any excuse necessary to list why the evidence is false. 

            Because our thought process has been altered by consensual reality, most people lack the ability to look at theories rationally and not in a biased manor. If you were to look at the facts that the scientist found, disproving the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, and agree with them, you could be called stupid or crazy, and with the desire to fit in with modern society, even if you are able to look at the information rationally, you might not embrace the theory because of the risk of ridicule. Consensual reality also relates to this subject because society chooses which theories are acceptable, and we are taught that anything else said about the subject is incorrect, and all the evidence to support it isn’t credible or verifiable. With the many things society teaches us about various ideas, we choose to believe what everyone else has been taught as correct.