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A great piece about how psychology explains science denialism. I love the space cult from the fifties story. I wonder if the Harold Camping cult will have the same experience on May 31, 2011?
2 comments
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Achilles Tang Mon, Apr 18, 2011 5:40:40pm |
Interesting, but I have one issue with some conclusions here. Take the experiment:
A subject was then presented with the résumé of a fake expert "depicted as a member of the National Academy of Sciences who had earned a Ph.D. in a pertinent field from one elite university and who was now on the faculty of another." The subject was then shown a book excerpt by that "expert," in which the risk of the issue at hand was portrayed as high or low, well-founded or speculative. The results were stark: When the scientist's position stated that global warming is real and human-caused, for instance, only 23 percent of hierarchical individualists agreed the person was a "trustworthy and knowledgeable expert." Yet 88 percent of egalitarian communitarians accepted the same scientist's expertise.
My point is that the test was applied to people with preconceived opinions on the subject matter. It is not clear to me what the results would have been if this was the first time that either group had been exposed to the concept.
This is partially acknowledged in the last sentence:
In other words, paradoxically, 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.
But only partially, because the implication is that "those who lead" set the values, and it is they who tell their followers what facts to accept, whether the followers understand them or not.
Needless to say, leaders will quickly discover that facts are a distraction to getting elected and before you know it the people will elect a second generation of leaders who, unlike the first, don't believe the facts either.
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freetoken Mon, Apr 18, 2011 7:13:23pm |
From the link:
This may help explain a curious pattern Nyhan and his colleagues found when 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. The subjects were using "social desirabililty" to tailor their beliefs (or stated beliefs, anyway) to whoever was listening.
Should we be surprised?
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