People are very resistant to change.
Dissonance is eliminated when we blind ourselves to contradictory propositions. And we are prepared to pay a very high price to preserve our most cherished ideas.
We do not allow contrary evidence to upset our cherished beliefs. Just as Festinger had hypothesized, disconfirmation actually makes our belief stronger
Anthony Greenwald called this phenomenon the “totalitarian ego.”It operates, he said, just like a police state: locking away threatening or incompatible ideas, suppressing evidence, and rewriting history, all in the service of a central idea or self-image.
Social support makes it easier to do things, or believe in ideas, that would feel a lot more uncomfortable if we were on our own. That social support always comes in the form of family, friends, or colleagues who share, and act on, the big ideas that bring them together.
But institutional power is a particularly seductive form of social support. After all, if you are in a position of tremendous institutional or political power, then not only are you hugely confirmed by the colleagues who share your beliefs, but questioning them would threaten everything: job, position, reputation, future career.
From the book, Willful Blindness by Margaret Heffernan