Which is the scientific name of stubbornness? Some people are stubborn, with strong, absolute beliefs, and it's really hard to change the ideas. They tend to see just the evidence that confirms their ideas.

What is the scientific name of this phenomenon? Confirmation bias? Mental rigidity? Stubbornness?
Can you give me some explanation of that?
A few bits of useful jargon come to mind...

Low cognitive complexity may lead to simplistic and absolutist thinking, which one may also refer to as splitting or &quot;black-and-white&quot; thinking (because there's no recognition of &quot;grey areas&quot;).

Need for closure and low openness to experience may lead to resistance to change, which is a somewhat less pejorative alternative to &quot;stubbornness&quot;. &quot;Mental rigidity&quot; is a little more subtly pejorative, in that you'd probably feel a little offended if someone called you mentally rigid, but clinical literature sometimes uses these terms nonetheless. Hence it has more pathological connotations than &quot;stubborn&quot;, which I think people recognize as more normally applicable – i.e., you can be stubborn without being psychologically abnormal or clinically dysfunctional, but you probably won't feel proud of it, and would prefer more euphemistic terms like &quot;assertive&quot; or &quot;traditional&quot;...which differ in literal meaning from stubbornness.
I guess that's the sort of cognitive distortion that you'd expect to result from self-serving bias: &quot;I'm not stubborn! I just happen to be right!&quot; Then again, if I were to say that, I might not be biased; I might actually be right! How's that for self-serving bias? :)

Confirmation bias differs somewhat from these. Its effects appear when actually seeking to confirm a belief (or hypothesis in a research context, wherein which we're probably most familiar with it), as opposed to when simply stating an absolute, simplistic belief, or refusing to question it at all. If I actually engage in argument and ignore your counterpoints, then you could say I'm demonstrating confirmation bias, but if I simply &quot;tell you how it is&quot; or tell you that you're wrong and refuse to change, that's really not a matter of confirmation bias per se.