Even after you're told the evidence was fake, the belief it created sticks

Researchers gave people false feedback on a task, then fully explained the feedback had been randomly assigned and meant nothing. People's opinions of their own ability barely moved back — the belief outlived the 'evidence' that built it. Psychologists call it belief perseverance.

— Lee Ross, Mark Lepper & Michael Hubbard, Perseverance in Self-Perception and Social Perception: Biased Attributional Processes in the Debriefing Paradigm — Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1975