Why We Can't Agree about (Some) Basic Facts (revised)

 Motivated Cognition

 

Motivated cognition is the unconscious tendency we have to conform our beliefs to the way we want things to be. Sports fans provide a great example of this. When there's a controversial officiating call, the fans of the team hurt by the call find themselves genuinely believing it was a bad call while fans of the team helped by the call find themselves genuinely believing it was a good call.

 

Dan Kahan of Yale University argues that a great deal of political conflict can be explained by a type of motivated cognition called cultural cognition. Cultural cognition is the unconscious tendency to conform our beliefs to the beliefs of our respective affinity groups — that is, groups "whose members are bound [by] their commitment to shared moral understandings." This follows when we consider that we have much to gain — socially, emotionally, materially — by maintaining our status in these groups.

 

 

An Important Study

 

Kahan and his colleagues conducted a study with 1,100 individuals that shed a great deal of light on cultural cognition. They set out ot answer this important question: "Why does public conflict over societal risks persist in the face of compelling and widely accessible scientific evidence?" They reasoned that two main possibilities existed: first, there is disagreement about such issues because many people have limited knowledge and reasoning skills; second, there is disagreement because people have the unconscious tendency to avoid beliefs that could alienate them from their respective affinity groups.

 

To answer this question, the researchers first tested people's political beliefs and numeracy. They then gave each subject two different problems which required them to draw inferences from empirical data. First, subjects were given the purported results of a study of a new skin-rash treatment and asked to determine whether the treatment had been effective. Subjects were then given the purported results of a study of a gun-control measure. Some of the gun-control studies showed that banning concealed weapons had made the cities in question safer, while other studies showed that the ban had made the cities less safe. Results from the study were compared to three hypothess the researchers had previously made.

 

Hypothesis #1: the more numerate subjects would do a better job interpreting data from the skin-rash study. This hypothesis proved to be true.

 

Hypothesis #2: subjects would do a worse job interpreting data from the gun-control study. This hypothesis also proved to be true. Predictably, those who opposed gun-control were more likely to interpret that data as supporting their belief while those who supported gun-control were more likely to interpret that data as supporting their belief.

 

Hypothesis #3: the more numerate subjects would be more likely to interpret data from the gun control accurately, regardless of their prior beliefs. This final hypothesis ended up being false. The more numerate subjects actually did a worse job interpreting data from the gun-control study. The researchers explained this result by noting that "more numerate individuals have a cognitive ability that lower numeracy ones do not" and that they "use that ability opportunistically in a manner geared to promoting their interest in forming and persisting in identity-protective beliefs."

 

In sum, the researchers found, cultural cognition is a real phenomenon. But more than just that, it appears that people who are better at reasoning engage in more cultural cognition. Put differently, people with more advanced reasoning skills take advantage of those skills and more fully distort the evidence in an effort to conform their beliefs to those of their respective affinity groups.

 

How to Save the Republic

 

Kahan believes that the ability of democracies "to protect the welfare of their citizens depends on finding a way to counteract this culture war over empirical data." Since his research shows that simply educating the public about these controversial issues will not reduce conflict, he concludes that must communicate in ways which have been informed by the findings of cultural cognition. He has proposed two strategies.

 

Strategy #1: Idenity Affirmation. This involves presenting information "in a manner that affirms rather than threatens people's values," as "people tend to resist scientific evidence that could lead to restrictions on activities valued by their group." For instance, those who reject the scientific consensus about climate change do so because they fear that acknowledging the evidence would force them to acccept "industry-constraining carbon-emission limits." Such individuals would be more willing to accept this evidence if they were told that "the possible responses to climate change include nuclear power and geoengineering, enterprises that to them symbolize human resourcefulness."

 

Strategy #2: Pluralistic Advocacy. This involves ensuring that "sound information is vouched for by a diverse set of experts." In one study, Kahan found that polarization about a controversial topic was "substantially reduced when people encountered advocates with diverse values on both sides of the issue. People feel that it is safe to consider evidence with an open mind when they know that a knowledgeable member of their cultural community accepts it."

 

 

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Kahan, D. (2010). Fixing the communications failure. Nature, 463(7279), 296-297.

 

Kahan, D. M., Jenkins‐Smith, H., & Braman, D. (2011). Cultural cognition of scientific consensus. Journal of Risk Research, 14(2), 147-174.

 

Kahan, D. M., Peters, E., Dawson, E. C., & Slovic, P. (2013). Motivated numeracy and enlightened self-government. Yale Law School, Public Law Working Paper.