Emotional benefits sustain worldviews that good arguments cannot dislodge

Evidence

Good arguments alone will not change anyone’s mind who is getting emotional benefits from a worldview. As long as he/she gains security, support, and belonging from the belief, it will be maintained until there is a better substitute or a personal experience shakes the conviction. The influence of the environment often only has a long-term effect. It is important to stay in touch to prevent the relative from staying exclusively in an ideological echo chamber. — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 393

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim that only a ‘better substitute’ or personal experience can shake an emotionally-sustained belief is a strong hypothesis worth testing against research on belief change and deconversion.
• DEEPTHINKING: Dense point: rational persuasion fails where belief supplies identity-level needs like security and belonging; suggests the real intervention is relational, not evidential.
• XREF: connects to: Emotion fails because it denies the world’s resistance while reason succeeds by acknowledging it — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 77; Emotion gives psychopolitics efficient access below conscious reflection

Related

• Persuasion requires entering the other’s worldview, not starting from one’s own (similarity 0.80)
• Some irrational beliefs serve as stabilizing forces for survival. (similarity 0.78)