In 2014, Dr. Brenden Nyhan, a professor at Dartmouth University, published a study about vaccines. However, this wasn’t your typical vaccine study - instead of studying the production of vaccines or whether they caused some strange side effect, the study focused on the people receiving the vaccines. 

Dr. Nyhan and his team interviewed over 1,700 parents who believed that vaccines caused autism and tried various interventions to combat and possibly even fix this misconception. Unfortunately, the study found that, even when presented with textual evidence or even pictures of children suffering from diseases we have vaccines for, parents were not likely to change their stance.

But why are we as a society so stubborn about our beliefs, even when there is quite a bit of evidence disproving those beliefs?

The answer is a phenomenon called “Cognitive Dissonance.” If you're anything like me, that phrase means nothing off the rip. In order to learn more, I turned to the source of all linguistic truth: Merriam-Webster's Dictionary. According to them, cognitive dissonance is a “psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously.”

Now wipe that glazed look off your face, and let me rewrite that definition in plain English. Cognitive dissonance is when you have two ideas that conflict with each other. Say I grew up believing that all ladybugs are female, and in high school a teacher shows me a male ladybug. That belief that I held is now being challenged, causing some discomfort and probably even a bit of questioning. After all, I grew up thinking one thing, and now I'm being told that thing was wrong.

One of the biggest issues with cognitive dissonance, as I see it, is how to combat it. Normally, I would say something along the lines of “learn to be flexible” or “become informed.” The unfortunate reality, however, is that you can't make other people do these things. As Dr. Nyhan showed, when we are confronted with this cognitive dissonance, no matter what it is or how well worded it may be, it likely won’t be enough to change our minds if we don’t want it to.

So what can we as a society do? Honestly, I don't have a perfect answer. All I can do is try to combat my own cognitive dissonance by being more open to new ideas. In the words of Mother Teresa, I “know only too well that what [I am] doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something.”