This is excellent. Long, and worth reading in its entirety, but some highlights :
"Ironically, in part because researchers employ so much nuance and strive to disclose all remaining sources of uncertainty, scientific evidence is highly susceptible to selective reading and misinterpretation. Giving ideologues or partisans scientific data that’s relevant to their beliefs is like unleashing them in the motivated-reasoning equivalent of a candy store."
"When the scientist’s position stated that global warming is real and human-caused, for instance, only 23 percent of hierarchical individualists [Republicans] agreed the person was a “trustworthy and knowledgeable expert.” Yet 88 percent of egalitarian communitarians [Democrats] accepted the same scientist’s expertise.... In other words, people rejected the validity of a scientific source because its conclusion contradicted their deeply held views—and thus the relative risks inherent in each scenario... The study subjects weren’t “anti-science”—not in their own minds, anyway. "
Unlike many similar articles, this one suggests ways to avoid the problem :
"...they tried to test the fallacy (PDF) that President Obama is a Muslim. When a nonwhite researcher was administering their study, research subjects were amenable to changing their minds about the president’s religion and updating incorrect views. But when only white researchers were present, GOP survey subjects in particular were more likely to believe the Obama Muslim myth than before. "
"If you want someone to accept new evidence, make sure to present it to them in a context that doesn’t trigger a defensive, emotional reaction.... you don’t lead with the facts in order to convince. You lead with the values—so as to give the facts a fighting chance."
https://medium.com/mother-jones/the-science-of-why-we-dont-believe-science-adfa0d026a7e
Looks like fairly standard 'overcoming misconceptions' stuff that people have been saying for many years.
ReplyDeleteI have a slight quibble with their study of how pro- and anti-global warming people judge the (invented) scientist as reliable or not. Putting this down to purely political position seems to ignore previous exposure to scientific evidence: an individual scientist who opposes the consensus is less likely to be correct than one supporting the consensus position (although that doesn't mean they can't be correct, of course).
They're last statement "Conservatives are more likely to embrace climate science if it comes to them via a business or religious leader, who can set the issue in the context of different values than those from which environmentalists or scientists often argue" is interesting. A recent survey (http://publicreligion.org/research/2014/11/believers-sympathizers-skeptics-americans-conflicted-climate-change-environmental-policy-science/) found that while 46% of the population as a whole were 'believers' in climate change, among those who had heard their clergy speak about it the fraction was 49% (compared to 36% in congregations where the clergy didn't speak about it).
Interestingly, Hispanic Catholics are the most concerned about climate change (even more than the ultra-liberal [by US standards] 'Unaffiliated'), while white Catholics (white presumably meaning non-Hispanic here) are among the least concerned. 70% of Hispanic Catholics report hearing their clergy speak about climate change 'sometimes' or 'often', compared to 20% of white Catholics, the lowest of any religious group. It will be interesting to see what impact the forthcoming Papal Encyclical on the environment will have...
A closely related point the article makes is that sometimes, even a rebuttal by highly trusted sources (e.g. Bush on the Saddam - Al Qeda link) can make no difference.
ReplyDeleteI found the point about framing statements in terms of values the most interesting part :
"...he and his colleagues packaged the basic science of climate change into fake newspaper articles bearing two very different headlines—”Scientific Panel Recommends Anti-Pollution Solution to Global Warming” and “Scientific Panel Recommends Nuclear Solution to Global Warming”—and then tested how citizens with different values responded. Sure enough, the latter framing made hierarchical individualists much more open to accepting the fact that humans are causing global warming."
So although it probably does matter who says what, and what they are actually saying, it may be that how they say it is the over-riding factor. Persuasion seems to be not so much about facts, or trust in individuals, (though these are both important) but whether the statements contradict their existing ideologies or not. Not that people don't sometimes change their minds because of the evidence, just that it's much easier to do so if the idea in question is framed so that it doesn't challenge what they really hold dear.
"On the one hand, it doesn’t make sense to discard an entire belief system, built up over a lifetime, because of some new snippet of information... Indeed, there’s a sense in which science denial could be considered keenly “rational.” "
I wonder a bit whether people tune out comments they don't agree with entirely. That 70% of Hispanic Catholics had heard their priests talking about climate change, but only 20% of white Catholics had means either the priests are pandering to what they think their congregations want to hear (which is certainly possible) or that people are re-writing their memory to get rid of people they trust saying things they disagree with.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what the response would have been if the original study had gone back a few weeks later and asked people if Bush had denied there was a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda.
Unfortunately the Papal Encyclical will almost certainly be couched in terms of Christ's teaching, social justice, stewardship of creation, respect for life, and the preferential option for the poor, none of which seem to have a great resonance with US catholicism...