I Know the Truth essay

In the article, “I Know the Truth, So Don't Bother Me with Facts", Jeffrey Kluger explains that it's hard to change someone’s belief because when they are presented with a contradiction they try to stick with what they know. In a study presented in the article only a few people change their mind after hearing the facts. He ends by saying that it might be our own ego that's preventing us to change our belief. I agree that even in the face of facts people will always stick with their own opinions.

            First of all, I believe that people would cling to what they know because of their ego. As the author stated, “some of that may be simple ego- none of us like being told we’re wrong.” I think almost everyone could relate with this including myself. This reminds me of the time when they showed a video of a kid being taking away by a hawk. After a while they showed it was fake I told my dad, but he didn’t believe me he kept saying it had to be true because it was on the news and that there is no way it could be fake. As much as I tried to convince him it wasn’t real, he jus didn’t want to believe me. This shows that people are stubborn and would rather ignore the facts than admit they could possibly be wrong.

            Moreover, I believe people tend to let emotion get in the way of facts. According to the article “even when people do take the time to learn the facts, the effort does no good”. This reminds me of an episode of the T.V show “How I Met your Mother”. When someone told Marshall that his wife got on her bosses limo Marshall immediately assume she was cheating on him. So he when to the bosses house and punched him in the face. Lilly’s boss explained that nothing had happened, but he punched him anyway because he was too mad to accept the facts. In brief, emotions can sometimes clutter our mind and make us not listen to anyone.

            In the end, sometimes we let our emotion and ego get in the way of what’s really going on. We never like to admit when we are wrong, even when the truth is being told right at us and have adapted to a mentality where we cannot easily accept things. We forget that we are all human and that we do make mistakes, we cannot always be right because we do not know everything in life.