Have you ever wondered why the divide on climate change almost always seems to fall along political affiliations? Here are three contemporary hypotheses as to why public debate on a critical scientific issue is categorized by political party:
1) The first hypothesis refers to what’s known as “dual process reasoning,”
a model of human thinking in which we can engage with ideas on two
levels. The first is quick and dirty, leaning on intuition and emotion.
The second is slow and deliberative, resulting in more objective and
rational decisions. If people are forming their opinions on the quick
and dirty level without careful, logical consideration, then public
controversies may be inevitable.
2) The second explanation pins the blame on purported differences between
the thought processes of liberals and conservatives. This view,
popularized by Chris Mooney in books like The Republican War on Science and The Republican Brain,
holds that conservatives shy away from complexity or uncertainty. This
would make the right side of the political spectrum more susceptible to
being misled on complex issues such as climate change (Johnson, 2013).
3) Finally, the last hypothesis is based on a concept called “cultural cognition” developed by the current study’s author, Dan Kahan.
This concept suggests that everyone judges the reliability
of information based on its implications for our cultural identity. This is best illustrated as a sort of "peer pressure". If one identifies as a political conservative it may be in his/her best interest to disregard climate change in order to maintain identity within the group. If one personally identifies as a political liberal, then protesting genetically modified food may solidify their role in a community of like-minded liberals.
A group study of 1,750 people representative of the U.S. population was conducted involving a survey. The participants were asked to indicate both political party identity and ideological identity then answer three mathematics questions designed to determine deliberative, reflective thinking. The more correct answers, the higher the individual's deliberative thinking. After this, the participants were split into three groups that were asked to "assess how effective they thought the survey was at indicating how reflective and open-minded a person is" (Johnson, 2013). The three groups were told that the survey was considered effective. One group was also told that “in one recent study, a researcher
found that people who accept evidence of climate change tend to get more
answers correct than those who reject evidence of climate change” and
so are judged to have more deliberative thinking and be more open-minded. The third group was told the
opposite—that a recent study showed that people who reject evidence of
climate change fared better on the test and were thus judged to be more open-minded.
The three hypotheses for politically polarizing issues are all different
avenues by which someone could end up employing “motivated
reasoning”—reasoning that comes to convenient conclusions rather than
the most objective ones. People who accept climate change are likely to
chafe at the suggestion that their fellow “accepters” are more
closed-minded than climate skeptics. As a result, they could be
motivated to come to the conclusion that the test isn’t very reliable.
This is meant to simulate the way in which people judge reports of
evidence for or against the positions they hold. The experimental groups evaluating the effectiveness of the test
displayed a fair amount of motivated reasoning, as expected. On average, liberals rated the test as less effective when told that people
who accepted climate change performed poorly on it, and they rated it
as more effective when told that it was the climate skeptics who didn’t
do as well. Conservatives did the same thing, and to a similar degree.
This study's results demonstrate that the third hypotheses, Kahan's concept of cultural cognition, plays a significant role in framing the opposing sides of the climate change debate along political affiliations.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/08/public-divide-on-climate-change-right-wing-nature-or-human-nature/
