Study finds extremists won’t admit to even concrete wrongs

A new study has found very liberal and conservative people find it much harder to admit they’re wrong about anything, even when it has nothing to do with politics.

Who is more likely to change their mind and views—the extreme right or left? Neither!

The experiments involved issues that had nothing to do with politics, economics, values or the great issues of the day.

"That makes it all the more difficult, that if you can't do it on basic things that are very concrete, how are you going to do it on something as subjective as politics and public policy?" said Rice University political science professor Mark Jones.

He said politics plays a bigger role in extreme rightists' or leftists' lives than others.

"These people on the extreme left and the extreme right are those people who dominate the party primaries leading to much of the polarization that we see today in Washington," said Jones.

Researchers found: “the refusal to admit error, or consider new evidence, is closely linked to measures of ‘dogmatic intolerance’ and ‘authoritarianism’.”


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