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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.
February 22, 2012 |
New research shows that conservatives who consider themselves well-informed and educated are also deeper in denial about issues like global warming.
February 22, 2012 |
This essay is adapted from Chris Mooneys forthcoming book, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Scienceand Reality, due out in April from Wiley.
I can still remember when I first realized how naïve I was in thinkinghopingthat 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 evidenceand 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.. Its 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.
...
Such is what is known to science--what is true (no matter what Rick Santorum might say). But the Pew data showed that humans arent 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 didntand if anything, knowledge and intelligence seemed to be worsening matters.
Buried in the Pew report was a little chart showing the relationship between ones political party affiliation, ones acceptance that humans are causing global warming, and ones level of education. And heres the mind-blowing surprise: For Republicans, having a college degree didnt 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 scienceamong 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. Its a reality that generates endless frustration for many scientistsand indeed, for many well-educated, reasonable people.
And most of all, for many liberals.
Lets 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 cant comprehend how such intellectual abominations could possibly exist.
And not only are we enraged by lies and misinformation; we want to refute themto argue, argue, argue about why were right and Republicans are wrong. Indeed, we often act as though right-wing misinformations 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 Obamas 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 its an education problem.
But the facts, the scientific data, say otherwise.
...
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 themselvesthey 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 its 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 oppositequite 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 yearand 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 thats not all: They were also asked standard questions to determine their degree of scientific literacy (e.g, Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteriatrue or false?) as well as their numeracy or capacity for mathematical reasoning (e.g., If Person As chance of getting a disease is 1 in 100 in 10 years, and person Bs risk is double that of A, what is Bs 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 sciencee.g., a political conservative or hierarchical-individualistthen more science knowledge and more skill in mathematical reasoning tended to make you even more dismissive. Precisely the opposite happened with the other groupegalitarian-communitarians or liberalswho 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 changewhich, 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 theyre supposed to think about the issueswhat people like them thinkand to be familiar with the arguments or reasons for holding these views. If challenged, they can then recall and reiterate these arguments. Theyve made them a part of their identities, a part of their brains, and in doing so, theyve drawn a strong emotional connection between certain facts or claims, and their deeply held political values. And theyre 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 conservativesso-called authoritariansdo 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 arewhereupon they become more accepting of inequality, more dogmatically traditionalist, and more resistant to change.
So now the big question: Are liberals also smart idiots?
Theres no doubt that more knowledgeor more political engagementcan produce more bias on either side of the aisle. Thats 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 Kahans 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 biaseskind of the flipside of the global warming issue--for the following reason. Its well known that liberals tend to start out distrustful of nuclear energy: Theres 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 Kahans study. As members of the egalitarian communitarian group in the studypeople 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 worriedand, I might add, closer to the opinion of the scientific community on the matter.
You may or may not support nuclear power personally, but lets 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 ideasso thats 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 evidencebut evidence also suggests that politics doesnt work in the way we want it to work, or think it should. We may be the children of the Enlightenmentconvinced that you need good facts to make good policiesbut that doesnt 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 latelyif 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 capablebut not, apparently, able to see past his ideological biases. Santorums 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. Hed just come up with another argument and response, probably even cleverer than the last, and certainly just as appealing to his audience. Wed 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. Its actually an opportunity to do betterto 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 youre a liberal who is emotionally wedded to the idea that rationality wins the daywell, then, its high time to listen to reason.
I can still remember when I first realized how naïve I was in thinkinghopingthat 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 evidenceand 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.. Its 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.
...
Such is what is known to science--what is true (no matter what Rick Santorum might say). But the Pew data showed that humans arent 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 didntand if anything, knowledge and intelligence seemed to be worsening matters.
Buried in the Pew report was a little chart showing the relationship between ones political party affiliation, ones acceptance that humans are causing global warming, and ones level of education. And heres the mind-blowing surprise: For Republicans, having a college degree didnt 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 scienceamong 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. Its a reality that generates endless frustration for many scientistsand indeed, for many well-educated, reasonable people.
And most of all, for many liberals.
Lets 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 cant comprehend how such intellectual abominations could possibly exist.
And not only are we enraged by lies and misinformation; we want to refute themto argue, argue, argue about why were right and Republicans are wrong. Indeed, we often act as though right-wing misinformations 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 Obamas 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 its an education problem.
But the facts, the scientific data, say otherwise.
...
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 themselvesthey 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 its 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 oppositequite 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 yearand 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 thats not all: They were also asked standard questions to determine their degree of scientific literacy (e.g, Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteriatrue or false?) as well as their numeracy or capacity for mathematical reasoning (e.g., If Person As chance of getting a disease is 1 in 100 in 10 years, and person Bs risk is double that of A, what is Bs 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 sciencee.g., a political conservative or hierarchical-individualistthen more science knowledge and more skill in mathematical reasoning tended to make you even more dismissive. Precisely the opposite happened with the other groupegalitarian-communitarians or liberalswho 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 changewhich, 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 theyre supposed to think about the issueswhat people like them thinkand to be familiar with the arguments or reasons for holding these views. If challenged, they can then recall and reiterate these arguments. Theyve made them a part of their identities, a part of their brains, and in doing so, theyve drawn a strong emotional connection between certain facts or claims, and their deeply held political values. And theyre 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 conservativesso-called authoritariansdo 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 arewhereupon they become more accepting of inequality, more dogmatically traditionalist, and more resistant to change.
So now the big question: Are liberals also smart idiots?
Theres no doubt that more knowledgeor more political engagementcan produce more bias on either side of the aisle. Thats 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 Kahans 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 biaseskind of the flipside of the global warming issue--for the following reason. Its well known that liberals tend to start out distrustful of nuclear energy: Theres 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 Kahans study. As members of the egalitarian communitarian group in the studypeople 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 worriedand, I might add, closer to the opinion of the scientific community on the matter.
You may or may not support nuclear power personally, but lets 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 ideasso thats 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 evidencebut evidence also suggests that politics doesnt work in the way we want it to work, or think it should. We may be the children of the Enlightenmentconvinced that you need good facts to make good policiesbut that doesnt 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 latelyif 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 capablebut not, apparently, able to see past his ideological biases. Santorums 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. Hed just come up with another argument and response, probably even cleverer than the last, and certainly just as appealing to his audience. Wed 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. Its actually an opportunity to do betterto 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 youre a liberal who is emotionally wedded to the idea that rationality wins the daywell, then, its high time to listen to reason.
