At Yale, we conducted an experiment to turn conservatives into liberals.

Peterson's research with the five factor model found that people's political leanings is determined by their personality. Big five personality traits are incredibly stable over time i.e. someone's personality never changes drastically, and as a result, neither will their general political leanings. Although you could probably convince someone to change opinion on a details-basis, especially if they didn't have a strong opinion. But only to an extent. From a cognitive theory perspective, people develop schemas about everything, which are essentially low-resolution abstractions of the world. The world contains too much information to process unfiltered, so what the human brain does is create simpler abstractions that it can handle, but these abstractions never contain even a fraction of the complexity and nuance of the real world. So let's say someone from a young age develops a schema of cops as malevolent and unfair, either as the result of bad experiences or because of inculcated beliefs from the parent. From that moment on, the person has a bias in information processing about cops i.e. they will discount information that goes contrary to their belief, and information confirming their existing belief will reinforce their belief. For instance if they end up having a bad experience with a cop, someone else would interpret as "that cop is an asshole" and it would end there. But they will be interpret it as confirmation that all cops are malevolent and out to get them. Even if they don't have a bad experience personally, they believe it's right around the corner. And it's pretty much impossible to get them to change opinion unless they want to change opinion. This is what stuff like "the secret" is by the way, it's cognitive theory disguised as magic, it's people changing their thoughts about the world and then getting to experience a different information processing, possibly a more useful one.
 
So you guys were experimenting with lobotomy technology.
 
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