A Methodologically Clever Psychology Study Shows that — Politically Biased Bone-Headism Leads Us to Sink with Our Peer Group — in Defiance of Fact

© 2013 Peter Free

 

10 September 2013

 

 

Citation — to the clever psychology study

 

Dan M. Kahan, Erica Cantrell Dawson, Ellen Peters, and Paul Slovic, Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government, Social Science Research Network (03 September 2013)

 

 

The study was aimed at finding out whether our political belief about “what should be” — affects our ability to correctly interpret quantitative data that proves the contrary point

 

The cleverness of this study — which involved 1,111 test subjects — lies in its use of identical numerical data in each of four versions of the basic data-interpretation “test”.

 

If the ability to correctly interpret numerical evidence is the sole influence on scientifically sound answer-getting — then a participant, who got calculated the quantitatively correct answer in one version of the truth-perception test, should have gotten the right answer in the others.

 

But most did not — indicating that our political biases deeply affect our ability to see numerically validated truths, even when it is lying quantitatively naked in our supposedly focused field of view.

 

 

You will have to read the paper to fully understand its method and results

 

The paper can be downloaded here.

 

Its gist is contained in a series of 2x2 boxes — familiar to psychologists and medical researchers — and graphed data curves.

 

Even though the experiment was simply constructed and straightforwardly written up, the only people likely to read and comprehend it are those who rank toward the top end of the author’s “numeracy” curve.  Meaning those folks, who have basic skills regarding numerical data interpretation.

 

 

For the rest — the basics summarized

 

Two versions of the psychological study involved asking participants to interpret two outcomes of a pretend skin lotion test.

 

Using identical numbers, but flipping the “rash got better” and “rash got worse” columns, the study effectively set a control baseline.  This recorded the subjects’ quantitative skills in figuring out whether the pretend skin lotion helped or worsened skin conditions.

 

Then, the team deliberately politicized the same numbers by saying that they came from a study regarding the crime differences in cities with and without gun carry laws.  As with the two skin lotion versions, the two versions of the gun data flipped column titles, so that one outcome favored gun carry and the other did not.

 

By doing this, the researchers hoped to detect whether one’s political beliefs about guns (pro versus control) would affect the ability to detect data that favored or rejected one’s political position.

 

 

Findings

 

The findings support the idea that people are a bit nuts, when it comes to absorbing the meaning of numbers that scientifically reject their political predilections.  Subjects were less likely to correctly interpret data that rejected their political preconceptions.

 

Surprisingly, this was even more pronounced among people, who were more knowledgeable about numerical data interpretation.  The “high numeracy” group eagerly accepted numbers proving their political point, while equally misinterpreting the same numbers, when those rejected their preconceptions.

 

 

The authors call this anti-quantitative trait rational — I call it being stupid

 

Being social scientists, the authors concluded that:

 

 

It is perfectly rational, from an individual-welfare perspective, for individuals to engage decision-relevant science in a manner that promotes culturally or politically congenial beliefs.

 

Making a mistake about the best-available evidence on an issue like climate change, nuclear waste disposal, or gun control will not increase the risk an ordinary member of the public faces, while forming a belief at odds with the one that predominates on it within important affinity groups of which they are members could expose him or her to an array of highly unpleasant consequences (Kahan 2012).

 

© 2013 Dan M. Kahan, Erica Cantrell Dawson, Ellen Peters, and Paul Slovic, Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government, Social Science Research Network (03 September 2013) (at page 28 of the PDF) (paragraph split)

 

The author’s soft-headed conclusion misses the evolutionary point — namely that a planet-altering species that defies Reality is not going to be around long.

 

 

Semantics — what is “rational” behavior?

 

If “rational” means anything at all in the scientific context, it means the ability to clearly see and comprehend evidence that lies in front of us.

 

Therefore, I quarrel with the research team’s use of the word “rational” to describe their subjects’ truth-denying analyses.

 

“Motivationally understandable” would have substituted a less semantically confusing description of the same phenomenon.

 

 

The moral? — We are often, and incorrigibly, stupid

 

Human beings prove repeatedly that we are irrationally short-sighted — in ways that arguably cripple our chances for survival and long term well-being.

 

I am not persuaded that being analytically stupid, just to hang comfortably with our peers, is a good path to either evolutionary success or personal happiness.

 

Once we abandon allegiance to provable Truth, meaningful signposts are gone.  And we are left with a world exclusively comprised of illusion.  Which, I suppose, is an apt description of the current Age of Narcissism.