The researchers found that people tended to believe that research that supported their original views had been better conducted and was more convincing than research that didn't. Whichever position they held initially, people tended to hold that position more strongly after reading research that supported it. Lord "et al." point out that it is reasonable for people to be less critical of research that supports their current position, but it seems less rational for people to significantly increase the strength of their attitudes when they read supporting evidence. When people had read both the research that supported their views and the research that did not, they tended to hold their original attitudes "more" strongly than before they received that information. These results should be understood in the context of several problems in the implementation of the study, including the fact the researchers changed the scaling of the outcome of the variable, so measuring attitude change was impossible, and measured polarization using a subjective assessment of attitude change and not a direct measure of how much change had occurred.