People hold central beliefs far more rigidly than peripheral ones

Evidence

You do not run into many people whose entire span of beliefs seem unchangeable. Usually we are firmer about some “centra!” things than the rest. You could get me to change my introductory lectures on intelligence pretty easily—although I am getting tired of reworking them. But you would have trouble getting me to believe intelligence has had little to do with our ascendance as a species. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 2631

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: People readily hold mutually contradictory conspiracy beliefs simultaneously. — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 94; Secular academics, despite their worldview, respond with rigidity and exhibitionism to threatened core values. — Philip E. Tetlock, Thinking the unthinkable: sacred values…, 49