Firmly Held Beliefs That Are Found To Be Wrong Are Better Remembered

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=certainty-principle-people-who-hold-false-convictions-are-better-at-retaining-corrected-information

A study has found a certain type of correction in the brain dubbed "hypercorrection" leads people to better remember information that has been found to be wrong if they were originally more sure of its factuality. The study asked participants a number of questions and asked them to rate how sure of the answer they were, and found that wrong and right answers stimulated a parts of the brain called the anterior cingulate and the medial frontal gyrus. The anterior cingulate registers surprise, which gets stimulated when a person's brain is startled when they find out something they strongly believed to be true was wrong. This helps people remember these facts better than things they may be unsure about.