Perceived peer agreement makes prejudice resistant to objective counter-evidence.

Evidence

Finally, perceived consensus can enhance (or reduce) prejudice, but it can also make prejudices more resistant to change (Stangor et al., 2001a, experiment 3). One week after reporting their prejudice levels toward African Americans, students were given information that their beliefs were either shared or were not shared by other students at their university. Then, in an attempt to change their beliefs, they were given allegedly “objective” (research-based) information about the actual traits possessed by African Americans. People who were told that others at their university agreed with them showed less opinion change as a result of the “objective” information than people who were told that others did not share their beliefs. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1917

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: why fact-based interventions fail — people who think their prejudice is shared ignore objective evidence. Implication for debunking misinformation.
• XREF: Connects to the backfire effect literature and to the finding that informational corrections are weak against identity-protective cognition.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 1917