Cognitive dissonance

In this 2010 TEDxCanberra talk, Ash Donaldson wants us to better understand why we believe what we do. He explains how our minds build belief and then breaks that process down, showing how and why people are fooled into believing that things like Power Bands, anti-aging treatments and supplements actually work.

Along the way, he tells the story of how, as a trainee pilot, he nearly got himself killed by letting his beliefs rule over logic and provable fact.

The talk sits within cognitive psychology and persuasive design. Cognitive dissonance, the discomfort of holding beliefs that conflict with each other or with our actions, is described as a persuasive pattern in the UI-Patterns.com library.