Dan Kahan on why it's rational to belief what your identity group believes
Kahan et al on why it is rational to believe what your political identity-group believes, even if it is false. "Science Curiosity and Political Information Processing" https://t.co/3tgcobNzXY pic.twitter.com/kX4fIfbod6
— Brian D. Earp (@briandavidearp) March 6, 2018
Thought back to this again when listening to this podcast. A separate reminder from that:
... the better subjects were math, no matter their politics, the better they performed when it came to determining the effectiveness of the cream. But when those exact same numerical results were relabeled, and subjects were told the research tested the effectiveness of gun control, the better subjects were at math the worse they performed — but only if the political party they belonged to was openly opposed to what the numbers suggested. If the results suggested that gun control was effective, Republicans who were good at math became bad at math. If the results showed gun control was ineffective, Democrats who were good at math became bad at math. If their party favored the results, then once again math skills alone determined the subjects’ performance, the same as it had when the exact same results supposedly measured the effectiveness of skin cream. Kahan says that the better you are with numbers, the better you are manipulating them to protect your identity-connected, and in this case politically motivated, beliefs.