My background and training in personality assessment tells me some people are hard wired to change their minds if given new information, but not everyone. There is a great article (I will try to find a link and post in a reply) about “why facts don’t change our minds”. The tl;dr of it is that people tend to adopt the beliefs of the group the *want* to belong to and cognitive biases will screen out information that would challenge those beliefs. Humans are social animals and this behaviour promotes belonging to a group for safety even though it doesn’t serve us well in “modern” society. So, decion making is complicated!
In terms of who we favour in elections the preferences of the group we hang with can be a big influence, and if you self-identify as Conservative or Liberal, or Green or NDP that can be enough reason to decide how you are going to vote.
If you are someone who is hard wired to consider the facts and vote according to how you understand the current environment though, well, that DOES explain the shift in preferences we have seen in the last six weeks. The context for making the decision has changed greatly with Trump ascending to office and creating chaos, threatening Canadian sovereignty. And the unifying point in December of wanting an alternative to Trudeau… well he is gone!
The polling data is pretty clear the ballot box question for most voters is who is best able to lead Canada through a crisis. And at the moment a clear majority thinks Carney is the guy to do that, and Poilievre is not.
My background and training in personality assessment tells me some people are hard wired to change their minds if given new information, but not everyone. There is a great article (I will try to find a link and post in a reply) about “why facts don’t change our minds”. The tl;dr of it is that people tend to adopt the beliefs of the group the *want* to belong to and cognitive biases will screen out information that would challenge those beliefs. Humans are social animals and this behaviour promotes belonging to a group for safety even though it doesn’t serve us well in “modern” society. So, decion making is complicated!
In terms of who we favour in elections the preferences of the group we hang with can be a big influence, and if you self-identify as Conservative or Liberal, or Green or NDP that can be enough reason to decide how you are going to vote.
If you are someone who is hard wired to consider the facts and vote according to how you understand the current environment though, well, that DOES explain the shift in preferences we have seen in the last six weeks. The context for making the decision has changed greatly with Trump ascending to office and creating chaos, threatening Canadian sovereignty. And the unifying point in December of wanting an alternative to Trudeau… well he is gone!
The polling data is pretty clear the ballot box question for most voters is who is best able to lead Canada through a crisis. And at the moment a clear majority thinks Carney is the guy to do that, and Poilievre is not.
Here is the article
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds