Sloman and Fernbach see in this result a little candle for a dark world. If we—or our friends or the pundits on CNN—spent less time pontificating and more trying to work through the implications of policy proposals, we’d realize how clueless we are and moderate our views. This, they write, “may be the only form of thinking that will shatter the illusion of explanatory depth and change people’s attitudes.”

This is exactly the point I keep trying to make. Ridiculing and censoring does nothing but get people to hold more firmly to their beliefs, however crazy they are. The only way to counter this is to get them to think about those beliefs without judging them.

"The majority were satisfied with their original choices; fewer than fifteen per cent changed their minds in step two."

The backfire effect regarding confirmation bias has been long established. Basically, when someone presents you with information that contradicts your existing political/religious/ideological beliefs, it just makes you double down on your existing beliefs.

Yes, this is basically what happens when the right calls the left 'SJWs' and the left calls the right 'Fascist Nazis'. The back and forth backfire effect is driving a massive ideological wedge between the population.