Opposition only hardens opinions

This explains so much about political punditry.

According to new research, you're more likely to cling even tighter to your old beliefs if you discover they're unpopular with the majority of other people.

"It may be that you feel proud because you were able to disprove, in your own mind, an opinion that most people have accepted," Richard Petty, co-author of the study and professor of psychology at Ohio State University, told Science Blog.

"You actually become doubly sure you were right," Petty said.

Previous psychological research into how majority and minority opinions affect opinions has tended to focus on what happens when people already know the widely accepted belief, and how they arrange their own ideas around that.

But Petty and his co-researchers wanted to turn that scenario on its head and ask what happens if people only learn the majority opinion after they've formed a strong belief of their own.

Their results are online in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The researchers gave undergraduate students in Spain either strong or weak arguments in favor of an unknown international firm, a place where they were told they could possibly score a future internship. Then they rated the students' overall ideas about the firm.

As expected, the students who heard the strong argument had positive beliefs about the firm, and the students who heard the weak argument had negative ideas.

The researchers then told half the students that the majority (nearly 90 percent) of other students supported the company, and told the other half that only 15 percent did.

Results showed that the students who learned they had the minority opinion were actually more confident in their ideas about the company than those who were in the majority.

"People may be thinking that: 'If I can find the flaws in a position that the majority of people believe, then my thoughts must really be good ones,’" Petty said.

It may be one reason why rooting for the underdog, or the minority opinion, is so appealing.