Psychological research is pretty clear on this: Reason ain’t logic. We feel first and reason second. Reasoning is literally coming up with reasons for the things you feel for the sake of justifying to others your feelings and the behavior (or plans to behave) they generate.
Coronavirus: you feel X or Y about masks, then you go looking in your head for reasons to justify that feeling, then you produce an argument for your position, and if challenged, you search for information, preferably from people who agree with you, and make another argument.
You repeat this process until you can walk away feeling secure in your reasoning, or until you can’t justify yourself and begin to doubt it. In studies, about about 13 percent of the information you encounter during this process must be counterattitudinal to generate doubt.
But you don’t update your position right then, you just stop counterarguing, until about 30 percent of the information you receive from the arguments of others (or through self-directed search) is counterattitudinal.
So, even though we are motivated reasoners, arguments/facts do work on us, it just takes a lot — and we actively avoid them when threatened, which makes getting to that 30 percent tough when taking a new position is risky, as in the case of politics and cultural norms/values.
Oh, and 30 percent is a default number. People have higher or lower thresholds given the salient risks and rewards of updating their prior reasoning from one conclusion to the next — for instance, your opinion on clouds has a low threshold, but on drinking bleach it’s likely high
