Denialism
In the psychology of human behavior, denialism is a person's choice to deny reality as a way to avoid a psychologically uncomfortable truth. Denialism is an essentially irrational action that withholds the validation of a historical experience or event, when a person refuses to accept an empirically verifiable reality.
In the sciences, denialism is the rejection of basic facts and concepts that are undisputed, well-supported parts of the scientific consensus on a subject, in favor of radical and controversial ideas. The terms Holocaust denialism and AIDS denialism describe the denial of the fac ...more
In the sciences, denialism is the rejection of basic facts and concepts that are undisputed, well-supported parts of the scientific consensus on a subject, in favor of radical and controversial ideas. The terms Holocaust denialism and AIDS denialism describe the denial of the fac ...more
Related Genres
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Consider a narrow deep river valley below a high dam, such that if the dam burst, the resulting flood of water would drown people for a long distance downstream.
When attitude pollsters ask people downstream of the dam how concerned they are about the dam’s bursting, it’s not surprising that fear of a dam burst is lowest far downstream, and increases among residents increasingly close to the dam.
Surprisingly, though, when one gets within a few miles of the dam, where fear of the dam’s breaki
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Like any pseudo scientific thinking, denialism begins with a desired conclusion. Rather than supporting a controversial or rejected claim, like many pseudo sciences, denialists maintain that a generally accepted scientific or historical claim is not true, usually for ideological reasons. Denialists then engage in what is called motivated reasoning, rationalizing why the undesired claim is not true or at least not proven. They therefore are working backwards from their desired conclusion, filling
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