When people with opposing views interpret new information in a biased way, their views can move even further apart. This is called "attitude polarization".[40] The effect was demonstrated by an experiment that involved drawing a series of red and black balls from one of two concealed "bingo baskets". Participants knew that one basket contained 60% black and 40% red balls; the other, 40% black and 60% red. The experimenters looked at what happened when balls of alternating color were drawn in turn, a sequence that does not favor either basket. After each ball was drawn, participants in one group were asked to state out loud their judgments of the probability that the balls were being drawn from one or the other basket. These participants tended to grow more confident with each successive draw—whether they initially thought the basket with 60% black balls or the one with 60% red balls was the more likely source, their estimate of the probability increased. Another group of participants were asked to state probability estimates only at the end of a sequence of drawn balls, rather than after each ball. They did not show the polarization effect, suggesting that it does not necessarily occur when people simply hold opposing positions, but rather when they openly commit to them.[41]A less abstract study was the Stanford biased interpretation experiment in which participants with strong opinions about the death penalty read about mixed experimental evidence. Twenty-three percent of the participants reported that their views had become more extreme, and this self-reported shift correlated strongly with their initial attitudes.[25] In later experiments, participants also reported their opinions becoming more extreme in response to ambiguous information. However, comparisons of their attitudes before and after the new evidence showed no significant change, suggesting that the self-reported changes might not be real.[28][40][42] Based on these experiments, Deanna Kuhn and Joseph Lao concluded that polarization is a real phenomenon but far from inevitable, only happening in a small minority of cases. They found that it was prompted not only by considering mixed evidence, but by merely thinking about the topic.[40] Charles Taber and Milton Lodge argued that the Stanford team's result had been hard to replicate because the arguments used in later experiments were too abstract or confusing to evoke an emotional response. The Taber and Lodge study used the emotionally charged topics of gun control and affirmative action.[28] They measured the attitudes of their participants towards these issues before and after reading arguments on each side of the debate. Two groups of participants showed attitude polarization: those with strong prior opinions and those who were politically knowledgeable. In part of this study, participants chose which information sources to read, from a list prepared by the experimenters. For example, they could read the National Rifle Association's and the Brady Anti-Handgun Coalition's arguments on gun control. Even when instructed to be even-handed, participants were more likely to read arguments that supported their existing attitudes than arguments that did not. This biased search for information correlated well with the polarization effect.[28] The backfire effect is a name for the finding that, given evidence against their beliefs, people can reject the evidence and believe even more strongly.[43][44] The phrase was first coined by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler.[45]

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