Backfire effect
Etymology
From backfire, an engine misfiring in the wrong direction. Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler popularized the term in 2010. Notably, the effect is contested: later large studies (Wood and Porter, 2019) found corrections usually do move people toward the truth, so any backfire seems rare and topic-specific rather than the norm.
noun · /BAK-fyr ih-FEKT/
A proposed effect in which correcting someone’s false belief makes them hold it even more strongly.
What it names
The unnerving possibility that facts can entrench the very error they were meant to fix, when a belief is tied to identity.
Example
Worried about the backfire effect, the fact-checkers led with the true claim rather than loudly repeating the myth.
Related idea
Confirmation bias is the reliable, everyday filtering of evidence; the backfire effect would be its dramatic, and much shakier, extreme.