backfire effect

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. The finding that, faced with evidence that contradicts their beliefs, people can reject the evidence and believe even more strongly.

Word forms

backfire effect backfire effects

Etymology

Coined by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler.

Related words

This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.