Moridin920 posted:

It's the case.

It's even worse than that iirc - your brain doesn't receive a piece of information and then judge veracity. It just assumes it is true and then if necessary goes about disproving it (whether consciously or subconsciously). Sometimes it doesn't; that's how a lot of idiot information gets spread. People hear it, it sounds more or less right, end of thought process. They don't critically examine everything that makes its way into the 'held belief' bucket. Even if you think you're a good skeptic you're very susceptible to something like disconfirmation bias (which Maine Paineframe describes above, basically).

Aside from the usual biases you hear about there's also stuff like anchoring which... hoo boy. Studies around that suggest that people basically just believe whatever they are told (Gilbert, Krull, and Malone authored a good one).

Most people are easily manipulated and led astray. It's not because they're stupid or naive necessarily, that's just how our brains are wired. 100,000 years ago not listening to the elders in the tribe meant you'd probably die fairly quickly. Doesn't really apply anymore obviously. They need to be taught critical thinking skills and how to parse information in the modern age from childhood but they aren't. Some would argue that is by design.

The lens through which we perceive the world is itself flawed and some people just don't want to hear that either. If Jesus appears in front of them then that's a miracle not a medical emergency (after all it is much more likely that you are suddenly hallucinating).