Charles Lord

Who they are

Lord is listed first on the 1979 article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that reported an experiment on how people with strong opinions about the death penalty read two studies on whether it deters crime.

Key papers

Lord, C. G., Ross, L., & Lepper, M. R. (1979). Biased assimilation and attitude polarization: The effects of prior theories on subsequently considered evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(11), 2098-2109. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.37.11.2098

Participants who favoured the death penalty and participants who opposed it each read descriptions of two studies, one appearing to support their view and one appearing to contradict it. Both groups rated the study matching their prior view as more convincing and better conducted.

Key ideas

The paper proposed that people with strong views on a complex social issue accept supportive research with little scrutiny and pick apart research that challenges them, so that opposing groups reading the same balanced evidence can end further apart. The outcome is called attitude polarisation.

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