I hypothesize that most people hold many beliefs without having heard the strongest arguments against those beliefs put in a manner most accessible to them. Â (Assume later statements that sound like assertions are in fact statements about my working hypothesis, I'm just not going to keep typing 'hypothesis')
Furthermore, this is the case for beliefs most people would consider their most important, most cherished, and most part of their identity. This includes beliefs about politics, economics, religion, family, love, and science.
The problem with this is described in my post from a couple days ago about argument (http://www.contriving.net/link/dw).  Without being forced to make a good defense of something you believe, you likely build your belief on hidden assumptions…a house of cards that you don't recognize as such.  It might be that your assumptions are correct, or maybe not, but there are assumptions you don't recognize in your reasons for belief.
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An example of this would be:
Dismissing atheism after arguing about it on a car racing forum rather than hearing arguments from Hitchens or whomever would present the best arguments for atheism in a manner most accessible to your open-minded hearing of them.
So . . . funny thing about that. Â Have you read up on the backfire effect? Â http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/
Yes. Â This is what I was alluding to when I inserted the statement "in a manner most accessible to them". Â By "accessible" I meant least likely to trigger rejection effects.
Most cognitive biases like the backfire effect are a matter of degree and are overcome-able with the right sort of approach. Â Some biases are weakened by simply being aware of them. Â Some biases revealed in experiments disappear when people are observed in the real world. Â
For example, take someone who held the pro-WMD position presented in Nyhan and Jason Reifler's study.  If they're interested in accurate beliefs, they're not going to read one pro and one con WMD article.  I would bet money that their effect size would shrink dramatically when studying a real someone in the real world who was interested in accuracy.
I certainly know it's possible as in my 36 years of life I've significantly altered or completely reversed my beliefs on all of the things I mention in the post ( "beliefs about politics, economics, religion, family, love, and science") by consciously searching out the absolute best arguments opposed to my beliefs.
Now, the "gotcha" in this whole thing is that most people aren't actually interested in accurate beliefs. Â They're instead interested in beliefs for various social/tribal reasons.
keeping you from accepting the truth
The problem is that "the truth" is a narrative, and using that narrative most often indicates profound confusion and malign intentions. The rest of the article demonstrates that.
We were discussing this in our echo chamber on twitter the other day: http://mathbabe.org/2013/12/27/how-do-opinions-and-convictions-propagate/
And I always thought that was one of the best things about science education–learning that you had to defend your conclusions in front of people who might be very hostile to those ideas. You had to consider their perspectives and prepare yourself for that.
However, this is a problem in the rest of the world. When challenged on a claim, most other people take it personally.