Chris Mooney most likely suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome:
On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 10:12 AM, Tommy News <tommysnews@gmail.com> wrote:
The Republican Brain: Why Even Educated Conservatives Deny Science --
and Reality
New research shows that conservatives who consider themselves
well-informed and educated are also deeper in denial about issues like
global warming.
-by Chris Mooney
February 22, 2012 |
This essay is adapted from Chris Mooney's forthcoming book,
The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and
Reality, due out in April from Wiley.
I can still remember when I first realized how naïve I was in
thinking—hoping—that laying out the "facts" would suffice to change
politicized minds, and especially Republican ones. It was a typically
wonkish, liberal revelation: One based on statistics and data. Only
this time, the data were showing, rather awkwardly, that people ignore
data and evidence—and often, knowledge and education only make the
problem worse.
Someone had sent me a 2008 Pew report documenting the intense partisan
divide in the U.S. over the reality of global warming.. It's a divide
that, maddeningly for scientists, has shown a paradoxical tendency to
widen even as the basic facts about global warming have become more
firmly established.
Those facts are these: Humans, since the industrial revolution, have
been burning more and more fossil fuels to power their societies, and
this has led to a steady accumulation of greenhouse gases, and
especially carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere. At this point, very
simple physics takes over, and you are pretty much doomed, by what
scientists refer to as the "radiative" properties of carbon dioxide
molecules (which trap infrared heat radiation that would otherwise
escape to space), to have a warming planet. Since about 1995,
scientists have not only confirmed that this warming is taking place,
but have also grown confident that it has, like the gun in a murder
mystery, our fingerprint on it. Natural fluctuations, although they
exist, can't explain what we're seeing. The only reasonable verdict is
that humans did it, in the atmosphere, with their cars and their
smokestacks.
Such is what is known to science--what is true (no matter what Rick
Santorum might say). But the Pew data showed that humans aren't as
predictable as carbon dioxide molecules. Despite a growing scientific
consensus about global warming, as of 2008 Democrats and Republicans
had cleaved over the facts stated above, like a divorcing couple. One
side bought into them, one side didn't—and if anything, knowledge and
intelligence seemed to be worsening matters.
Buried in the Pew report was a little chart showing the relationship
between one's political party affiliation, one's acceptance that
humans are causing global warming, and one's level of education. And
here's the mind-blowing surprise: For Republicans, having a college
degree didn't appear to make one any more open to what scientists have
to say. On the contrary, better-educated Republicans were more
skeptical of modern climate science than their less educated brethren.
Only 19 percent of college-educated Republicans agreed that the planet
is warming due to human actions, versus 31 percent of
non-college-educated Republicans.
For Democrats and Independents, the opposite was the case. More
education correlated with being more accepting of climate
science—among Democrats, dramatically so. The difference in acceptance
between more and less educated Democrats was 23 percentage points.
This was my first encounter with what I now like to call the "smart
idiots" effect: The fact that politically sophisticated or
knowledgeable people are often more biased, and less persuadable, than
the ignorant. It's a reality that generates endless frustration for
many scientists—and indeed, for many well-educated, reasonable people.
And most of all, for many liberals.
Let's face it: We liberals and progressives are absolutely outraged by
partisan misinformation. Lies about "death panels." People seriously
thinking that President Obama is a Muslim, not born in the United
States. Climate-change denial. Debt ceiling denial. These things drive
us crazy, in large part because we can't comprehend how such
intellectual abominations could possibly exist.
And not only are we enraged by lies and misinformation; we want to
refute them—to argue, argue, argue about why we're right and
Republicans are wrong. Indeed, we often act as though right-wing
misinformation's defeat is nigh, if we could only make people wiser
and more educated (just like us) and get them the medicine that is
correct information.
No less than President Obama's science adviser John Holdren (a man
whom I greatly admire, but disagree with in this instance) has stated,
when asked how to get Republicans in Congress to accept our mainstream
scientific understanding of climate change, that it's an "education
problem."
But the facts, the scientific data, say otherwise.
Indeed, the rapidly growing social scientific literature on the
resistance to global warming (see for examples here and here) says so
pretty unequivocally. Again and again, Republicans or conservatives
who say they know more about the topic, or are more educated, are
shown to be more in denial, and often more sure of themselves as
well—and are confident they don't need any more information on the
issue.
Tea Party members appear to be the worst of all. In a recent survey by
Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, they rejected the
science of global warming even more strongly than average Republicans
did. For instance, considerably more Tea Party members than
Republicans incorrectly thought there was a lot of scientific
disagreement about global warming (69 percent to 56 percent). Most
strikingly, the Tea Party members were very sure of themselves—they
considered themselves "very well-informed" about global warming and
were more likely than other groups to say they "do not need any more
information" to make up their minds on the issue.
But it's not just global warming where the "smart idiot" effect
occurs. It also emerges on nonscientific but factually contested
issues, like the claim that President Obama is a Muslim. Belief in
this falsehood actually increased more among better-educated
Republicans from 2009 to 2010 than it did among less-educated
Republicans, according to research by George Washington University
political scientist John Sides.
The same effect has also been captured in relation to the myth that
the healthcare reform bill empowered government "death panels."
According to research by Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan,
Republicans who thought they knew more about the Obama healthcare plan
were "paradoxically more likely to endorse the misperception than
those who did not." Well-informed Democrats were the opposite—quite
certain there were no "death panels" in the bill.
The Democrats also happened to be right, by the way.
The idealistic, liberal, Enlightenment notion that knowledge will save
us, or unite us, was even put to a scientific test last year—and it
failed badly.
Yale researcher Dan Kahan and his colleagues set out to study the
relationship between political views, scientific knowledge or
reasoning abilities, and opinions on contested scientific issues like
global warming. In their study, more than 1,500 randomly selected
Americans were asked about their political worldviews and their
opinions about how dangerous global warming and nuclear power are. But
that's not all: They were also asked standard questions to determine
their degree of scientific literacy (e.g, "Antibiotics kill viruses as
well as bacteria—true or false?") as well as their numeracy or
capacity for mathematical reasoning (e.g., "If Person A's chance of
getting a disease is 1 in 100 in 10 years, and person B's risk is
double that of A, what is B's risk?").
The result was stunning and alarming. The standard view that knowing
more science, or being better at mathematical reasoning, ought to make
you more accepting of mainstream climate science simply crashed and
burned.
Instead, here was the result. If you were already part of a cultural
group predisposed to distrust climate science—e.g., a political
conservative or "hierarchical-individualist"—then more science
knowledge and more skill in mathematical reasoning tended to make you
even more dismissive. Precisely the opposite happened with the other
group—"egalitarian-communitarians" or liberals—who tended to worry
more as they knew more science and math. The result was that, overall,
more scientific literacy and mathematical ability led to greater
political polarization over climate change—which, of course, is
precisely what we see in the polls.
So much for education serving as an antidote to politically biased reasoning.
What accounts for the "smart idiot" effect?
For one thing, well-informed or well-educated conservatives probably
consume more conservative news and opinion, such as by watching Fox
News. Thus, they are more likely to know what they're supposed to
think about the issues—what people like them think—and to be familiar
with the arguments or reasons for holding these views. If challenged,
they can then recall and reiterate these arguments. They've made them
a part of their identities, a part of their brains, and in doing so,
they've drawn a strong emotional connection between certain "facts" or
claims, and their deeply held political values. And they're ready to
argue.
What this suggests, critically, is that sophisticated conservatives
may be very different from unsophisticated or less-informed ones.
Paradoxically, we would expect less informed conservatives to be
easier to persuade, and more responsive to new and challenging
information.
In fact, there is even research suggesting that the most rigid and
inflexible breed of conservatives—so-called authoritarians—do not
really become their ideological selves until they actually learn
something about politics first. A kind of "authoritarian activation"
needs to occur, and it happens through the development of political
"expertise." Consuming a lot of political information seems to help
authoritarians feel who they are—whereupon they become more accepting
of inequality, more dogmatically traditionalist, and more resistant to
change.
So now the big question: Are liberals also "smart idiots"?
There's no doubt that more knowledge—or more political engagement—can
produce more bias on either side of the aisle. That's because it
forges a stronger bond between our emotions and identities on the one
hand, and a particular body of facts on the other.
But there are also reason to think that, with liberals, there is
something else going on. Liberals, to quote George Lakoff, subscribe
to a view that might be dubbed "Old Enlightenment reason." They really
do seem to like facts; it seems to be part of who they are. And
fascinatingly, in Kahan's study liberals did not act like smart idiots
when the question posed was about the safety of nuclear power.
Nuclear power is a classic test case for liberal biases—kind of the
flipside of the global warming issue--for the following reason. It's
well known that liberals tend to start out distrustful of nuclear
energy: There's a long history of this on the left. But this impulse
puts them at odds with the views of the scientific community on the
matter (scientists tend to think nuclear power risks are overblown,
especially in light of the dangers of other energy sources, like
coal).
So are liberals "smart idiots" on nukes? Not in Kahan's study. As
members of the "egalitarian communitarian" group in the study—people
with more liberal values--knew more science and math, they did not
become more worried, overall, about the risks of nuclear power.
Rather, they moved in the opposite direction from where these initial
impulses would have taken them. They become less worried—and, I might
add, closer to the opinion of the scientific community on the matter.
You may or may not support nuclear power personally, but let's face
it: This is not the "smart idiot" effect. It looks a lot more like
open-mindedness.
What does all of this mean?
First, these findings are just one small slice an emerging body of
science on liberal and conservative psychological differences, which I
discuss in detail in my forthcoming book. An overall result is
definitely that liberals tend to be more flexible and open to new
ideas—so that's a possible factor lying behind these data. In fact,
recent evidence suggests that wanting to explore the world and try new
things, as opposed to viewing the world as threatening, may subtly
push people towards liberal ideologies (and vice versa).
Politically and strategically, meanwhile, the evidence presented here
leaves liberals and progressives in a rather awkward situation. We
like evidence—but evidence also suggests that politics doesn't work in
the way we want it to work, or think it should. We may be the children
of the Enlightenment—convinced that you need good facts to make good
policies—but that doesn't mean this is equally true for all of
humanity, or that it is as true of our political opponents as it is of
us.
Nevertheless, this knowledge ought to be welcomed, for it offers a
learning opportunity and, frankly, a better way of understanding
politics and our opponents alike. For instance, it can help us see
through the scientific-sounding arguments of someone like Rick
Santorum, who has been talking a lot about climate science lately—if
only in order to bash it.
On global warming, Santorum definitely has an argument, and he has
"facts" to cite. And he is obviously intelligent and capable—but not,
apparently, able to see past his ideological biases. Santorum's
argument ultimately comes down to a dismissal of climate science and
climate scientists, and even the embrace of a conspiracy theory, one
in which the scientists of the world are conspiring to subvert
economic growth (yeah, right).
Viewing all this as an ideologically defensive maneuver not only
explains a lot, it helps us realize that refuting Santorum probably
serves little purpose. He'd just come up with another argument and
response, probably even cleverer than the last, and certainly just as
appealing to his audience. We'd be much better concentrating our
energies elsewhere, where people are more persuadable.
A more scientific understanding of persuasion, then, should not be
seen as threatening. It's actually an opportunity to do better—to be
more effective and politically successful.
Indeed, if we believe in evidence then we should also welcome the
evidence showing its limited power to persuade--especially in
politicized areas where deep emotions are involved. Before you start
off your next argument with a fact, then, first think about what the
facts say about that strategy. If you're a liberal who is emotionally
wedded to the idea that rationality wins the day—well, then, it's high
time to listen to reason.
More:
http://www.alternet.org/story/154252/the_republican_brain%3A_why_even_educated_conservatives_deny_science_--_and_reality?page=entire
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
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