The Republican Brain by is Mooney Page A

similar format, that despite some Democratic claims, George W. Bush did not actually “ban” embryonic stem cell research. And it’s true: Bush merely restricted government funding to research on a limited number of stem cell lines, while leaving research completely unregulated in the private sector. Liberals weren’t particularly amenable to persuasion in the experiment either—but unlike conservatives, they did not “backfire.” Perhaps they were less defensive about the matter, less wedded to the notion of a “ban.” Perhaps whether or not it was technically a ban, they still felt Bush’s limits on stem cell research were a bad policy.
    The Nyhan and Reifler study presents another piece of evidence suggesting that conservatives may defend their beliefs more strongly than liberals do in the face of challenge, and be less amenable to changing their minds based on the evidence—at least in the political realm.
    Another similar study gives some inkling of what may be going through people’s minds when they resist persuasion—and shows powerful evidence of conservative defensiveness in particular.
    Take the common insinuation during the George W. Bush years that Iraq and Al Qaeda were secretly collaborating in some way. Northwestern University sociologist Monica Prasad and her colleagues wanted to test whether they could dislodge this belief among those most likely to hold it—Republican partisans from highly GOP-friendly counties in North Carolina and Illinois. So the researchers set up a study in which they directly challenged some of these Republicans in person, citing the findings of the 9/11 Commission as well as a statement by George W. Bush, in which the former president himself protested that his administration had “never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and Al Qaeda.”
    As it turned out, not even Bush’s own words could change the minds of these Bush voters. Just one out of 49 partisans who originally believed the Iraq–Al Qaeda claim changed his or her mind about it upon being challenged and presented with new information. Seven more claimed never to have believed the claim in the first place (although they clearly had). The remaining 41 all came up with ways to preserve their beliefs, ranging from generating counterarguments to simply being un-movable:
    INTERVIEWER: . . . the September 11 Commission found no link between Saddam and 9/11, and this is what President Bush said. [pause] This is what the commission said. Do you have any comments on either of those?
    RESPONDENT: Well, I bet they say that the Commission didn’t have any proof of it but I guess we still can have our opinions and feel that way even though they say that.
    I didn’t choose these two studies of political misinformation and the Iraq war by accident. It is hard to think of many liberal-conservative divides over the facts that have held greater consequences for lives, economies, and international security, than this one.
    The split over whether Iraq had the touted “WMD,” and whether Saddam and Osama were frat buddies, represented a true turning point in the relationship between our politics and objective reality. In case you missed it: Reality lost badly. Conservatives and Republicans were powerfully and persistently wrong, following a cherished leader into a war based on false premises—and then, according to these studies, finding themselves unable to escape the quagmire of unreality even after several years had passed.

    And still, I have not yet described what may be the most insidious side of motivated reasoning, particularly as it relates to conservative denial of the seemingly undeniable.
    Call it the “smart idiots” effect: The politically sophisticated or knowledgeable are often more biased, and less persuadable, than the ignorant. “People who have a dislike of some policy—for example, abortion—if