blog entry 6

    Jeffrey Kluger explains how people receive information matters because that alters their perception. People often tend to base their opinion only on rumors. And once presented with contradicting facts they are still not willing to change their opinion.

    Jeffrey Kluger gives an example about the ongoing dispute over the  mosque at Ground Zero in downtown Manhattan, which is not really a mosque, and it will not be build on Ground Zero, but few blocks down. The problem is that delivery of the information to the public decides how people perceive things and once presented to them people often tend to base their opinion whether it is a rumor or not, even when people do take the time to learn the facts, the efforts often does no good.


    In the study by R.Kelly Garrett and Erik Nisbet, research was conducted involving 750 people who reported being familiar with and believing at least one of the gossips about the proposed Islamic cultural center. What they found most troubling was that even if people do take time to learn new facts they are still not willing to change their opinion. People simply do not like to be told that they are wrong. Studies show that when presented with data that contradicts false beliefs, people tend to cling to their biased beliefs even more.

In the end it is all up to us to decided what we do with the information presented to us, but it is also up to us that if we are hearing another side of the story we should look into it more before we make our final decision.