Similar to a tradition stall, a psychology of disbelief stall has to do with adhering to the known. We are conditioned to believe in a right way of doing things, and are hesitant to try to accept or understand challenging viewpoints. People perhaps feel threatened by them and are afraid of being ridiculed by others if they accept them. For instance, Professor Robert Cialdini, of Arizona State University, talks about people as being afraid to change their viewpoint especially if they have already publicly committed to it.7 More than just feeling attached to a certain way of doing something is the idea that the new change may be hurtful.
Philosopher and scientist Thomas Kuhn argued that the main effect of science is to create disbelief about any other ways of thinking about science; i.e. destroying old ways of thinking about things and creating new ones. He felt the scientific community generally teams up behind one "correct" point of view while anything opposing this is looked upon quite unfavorably.8 This psychosocial dynamic in itself has great implications for the development and maintenance of stalls.
Some examples:
Dial S For Stall: Alexander Graham Bell and his telephone woes
Another example includes Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the telephone, and was met with a good deal of ridicule. Prior to this, people looked at the idea of wires linking people as ridiculous. The attitude that there was something wrong with someone who was too lazy to walk next door to talk to his or her neighbor. People did not want to believe that the telephone could be valuable because they could only imagine it being used in a negative way. It took a complete shift in thinking for people to really understand its utility.A Hot Topic: How the debate over global warming fits in
Global warming may be an example of Kuhn's ideas and the psychology of disbelief stall. While the vast majority of the scientific community believes that global warming is occurring, there really is no way to tell for sure right now if this is indeed the case and to what extent. We only have temperature records going back a short period of time. Additionally, a lot of our interpretations are based on conjecture and imprecise measurements. It may be more important where temperatures have changed compared to the average, and so far people have not been looking at this.One scientist recently made a public statement that global warming was not occurring and explained his reasoning. This was met with hostility and disbelief on the part of the rest of the scientific community, instead of the sincere attempt to consider his work. The point here is not whether it is or is not occurring but what this says about the psychology behind science. Historically, it has sometimes taken a real "shakedown" to change the way people think about the world and thus to allow for progress.
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7 Cialdini, Robert B. Influence: Science and Practice. HarperCollins College Publishers. 1993.
8 Horwich, Paul. ed. World Changes: Thomas Kuhn and the Nature of Science. M.I.T. Press. 1993.
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