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The expressive rationality of inaccurate perceptions

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Abstract

This commentary uses the dynamic of identity-protective cognition to pose a friendly challenge to Jussim (2012). Like other forms of information processing, this one is too readily characterized as a bias. It is no mistake, however, to view identity-protective cognition as generating inaccurate perceptions. The “bounded rationality” paradigm incorrectly equates rationality with forming accurate beliefs. But so does Jussim's critique.

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... Our beliefs are routinely corrupted by less noble goals: for status, self-esteem, social acceptance, and so on. That is, human cognition is often motivated cognition, 2 the unconscious tendency to conform belief formation to non-epistemic ends (Kahan 2015;Kunda 1990;Mele 2000). ...
... Motivated cognition is not restricted to biases in this form of cognition. It can and does influence almost every stage of information sampling and processing (Funkhouser 2019;Kahan 2015), including-as I return to below ( §5)-the social dynamics of information exchange. ...
... Second, members of groups are often emotionally attached to certain groupspecific beliefs because such beliefs are in some sense identity defining (Kahan 2015;Williams 2021a). In such cases, the tendency of social identification to generate motives to signal membership of and allegiance to groups carries over into the domain of beliefs (Funkhouser 2017;Kahan 2015;Williams 2021b). ...
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Most research on motivated cognition is individualistic: it assumes that individuals form and maintain motivated beliefs primarily through biases in how they seek out and process information. Against this, I argue that many of the most consequential forms of motivated cognition are socially scaffolded, dependent for their success on social practices that function to promote and protect motivated irrationality. Specifically, I identify and explore a common form of motivated cognition that results from group identification. In such cases, motives to form group-favoured beliefs become widespread among group members and create an incentive structure-a pattern of social rewards and punishments-that influences the production and transmission of information in ways conducive to generating, protecting, and rationalising such beliefs. In addition to clarifying this phenomenon, I identify its implications for several topics of interest to social epistemologists, including active ignorance, testimonial injustice, and prejudice.
... Interpretations that depart from normative expectations are often attributed to ideologically-laden blind spots that lead to ignoring relevant contradictory data (Shah et al., 2017) and to imbalanced considerations of data that are fueled by a need to preserve coherence with one's core beliefs and affinity groups (Kahan, 2017). Findings concerning the relationship between numeracy (an aspect of data literacy) and the adoption of views consistent with scientific consensus, such as anthropogenic climate change, are mixed. ...
... Overall, numeracy is associated with a better ability to judge health risks and benefits (Osborn et al., 2010;Peters et al., 2007). Yet, some studies suggest that when positions on an issue are associated with political or social groups, people may align with partisan views regardless of the weight and direction of the evidence before them, and this effect may be even stronger for those with high numeracy (Kahan, 2017;Kahan et al., 2017). In contrast, other studies posit that numeracy predicts attention to evidence and alignment with scientific consensus when prior knowledge and additional sociocultural factors are included in the analysis (Cho et al., 2021). ...
... In the literature review, we noted how those with higher numeracy were more likely than those with weaker numeracy to privilege the views of their affinity groups over evidence in evaluating information (Kahan, 2017;Kahan et al., 2017). Such results were found not only with respect to numeracy but to overall science education attainment levels (Drummond & Fischhoff, 2017). ...
Article
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Is public engagement with science deliberative and evidence‐based? The public is often perceived as underprepared to use data and susceptible to partisan and emotional manipulation. Consequently, educational efforts focus on the ability to identify reliable information. We posit that effective engagement with science goes beyond this and hinges on data literacy. We leveraged the unique circumstances of COVID‐19, where diverse people inundated with pandemic‐related data representations in the media needed to make consequential decisions, to examine whether people use data and what factors affect such use. In a survey of a representative Israeli adult sample, participants reported their information habits and beliefs before and during COVID‐19. On being presented with graphs and datasets, they answered data literacy and COVID‐19‐related functional reasoning assessments (e.g., would you travel abroad?). Data literacy distinguished those who incorporated data from those who did not. Yet, participants incorporated moral, social, and economic considerations at all data literacy levels, suggesting that people may be deliberative even when they do not attend to quantified data. Moreover, participants' trust in science and data interpretation competence were key factors mediating the relationship between self‐efficacy in data interpretation skills and the incorporation of data in reasoning. The findings extend beyond COVID‐19 to a broader understanding of the factors influencing public engagement with quantitative representations. Rather than focusing solely on remediating data interpretation, we suggest that educative efforts work on multiple fronts and that cultivating trust in science is key to a broader, more deliberative engagement with science.
... The bounded rationality approach recognizes that cognitive biases have great internal consistency (Stanovich & West, 2000) and states that, due to inherent cognitive and computational limits, individuals err on their performance on such tasks in systematic and predictable ways (Stanovich & West, 2000). On the other hand, the expressive rationality theory emphasizes that individuals' style of reasoning serves an important additional purpose, that is, that in situations which regard culturally disputed issues, people rationally engage with information that conforms to their beliefs (Kahan, 2017). Such deviations from normative models of rationality have been demonstrated in various types of attitudes, such as political issues and risks of climate change (Kahan, 2017;Kahan et al., 2012), as well as, in recent years, health attitudes (Bluementhal-Barby & Krieger, 2015;Gigerenzer & Gray, 2011). ...
... On the other hand, the expressive rationality theory emphasizes that individuals' style of reasoning serves an important additional purpose, that is, that in situations which regard culturally disputed issues, people rationally engage with information that conforms to their beliefs (Kahan, 2017). Such deviations from normative models of rationality have been demonstrated in various types of attitudes, such as political issues and risks of climate change (Kahan, 2017;Kahan et al., 2012), as well as, in recent years, health attitudes (Bluementhal-Barby & Krieger, 2015;Gigerenzer & Gray, 2011). ...
... Hereby, rationality does not impact the directionality of individuals' original attitude, as these are formed based on their other values and beliefs. Thus, individuals higher in rationality would be able to better justify these attitudes once they were formed, resulting in stronger and more polarized views (Kahan, 2017;Kahan et al., 2012). In other words, individuals that are more rational would utilize their distinctive cognitive proficiencies to recognize situations relevant for attitude formation and interpret the vaccine data in a way that allows them to form stronger arguments in ways that are congruent with their formed identity, either pro or con vaccination. ...
Article
Although previous studies have demonstrated an association between vaccine attitudes and cognitive biases, often resulting in vaccination hesitancy, the exact contribution of rationality has not been fully clarified. We tested two hypotheses regarding the impact of rationality on vaccine attitudes stemming from bounded and expressive rationality. We focused on parental vaccine attitudes operationalized by the affective, behavioral, and cognitive attitude components and investigated how these are influenced by disillusionment toward authorities and ability to engage in rational thinking operationalized using cognitive reflection and heuristics and biases tasks. The study was of a cross‐sectional correlational design with a non‐probabilistic sample of 823 volunteer participants surveyed online in April and May 2018 in Croatia. The results identified disillusionment toward authorities as a predictor of all components. Furthermore, performance on heuristics and biases tasks also predicted the affective and cognitive, but not the behavioral component, whereas cognitive reflection had no impact on vaccine attitudes. Next, a moderation effect of disillusionment toward authorities on the association between the omission bias task and all attitude components was identified. Parents with low disillusionment demonstrated positive vaccine attitudes regardless of their rationality, whereas for parents with high disillusionment a significant positive correlation between performance on the omission bias task as assessed with a vaccination vignette and attitudes was identified. This suggests that the ability to resist vaccine specific omission bias, that is, higher rationality, can decrease the negative effects of disillusionment, which supports the bounded rationality hypothesis.
... bounded rationality thesis; Kahan, 2015;Kahneman, 2003;Westen i sur., 2006) i teza ekspresivne racionalnosti (engl. expressive rationality thesis; Kahan, 2017b;Kahan i sur., 2012). ...
... Prema TER-u od pojedinaca se može očekivati korištenje kognitivnih kapaciteta da bi osigurali ona uvjerenja koja signaliziraju opredjeljenja i definiraju njihov identitet, a ne nužno ona koja su točna (Kahan i Stanovich, 2016;Stanovich, 2013). Promišljena i analitična obrada informacija "motiviranoga" sustava 2 povećava sklonost kogniciji usmjerenoj na zaštitu identiteta u percepciji i interpretaciji relevantnih činjenica i empirijskih dokaza (Kahan, 2017b;Kahan, Landrum i sur., 2017). Naime, pojedinci koji posjeduju kapacitet i sklonost za zahtjevno procesiranje tipa 2 trebali bi biti još vještiji u rezoniranju usmjerenome na zaštitu identiteta, odnosno u prilagođavanju svojih uvjerenja ideologiji grupa s kojima se identificiraju te u sustavnome filtriranju informacija koje odgovaraju njihovu svjetonazoru. ...
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U svijetu preplavljenome informacijama naša je sposobnost racionalnoga razmišljanja često na kušnji. U ovome radu donosimo teorijski i istraživački pregled literature koja pojašnjava kada nam i zašto uvjerenja ponekad divergiraju od empirijski provjerenih spoznaja i činjenica, posebno u kontekstu svjetonazorske polarizacije. Polazeći od okvira dvoprocesnih teorija za razumijevanje individualnih razlika u racionalnosti, razmatramo dvije teze o ulozi analitičkoga rezoniranja u (ne)prihvaćanju epistemički utemeljenih dokaza i činjenica podložnih svjetonazorskoj polarizaciji. Dosadašnji nalazi pružaju složenu sliku te ostavljaju prostor različitim teorijskim interpretacijama, ukazujući na nužnost sveobuhvatnoga međudisciplinarnog pristupa u svrhu daljnjega produbljivanja područja.
... Nowadays, as free speech seemingly challenges the progressive values of justice and equality, conservatives have come to adopt a more favorable attitude, and progressives a more restrictive attitude, toward free speech (see Epstein et al., 2018). From this perspective, the contemporary politicization of free speech is primarily a product of opportunism and not principle (see identityprotective cognition, Kahan, 2017;Kahan et al., 2011) -i.e., a reflection of the shifting issues at hand and not of stable political values of the left versus right. ...
... These results can be fruitfully explained by theories of identity-protective or cultural cognition (Kahan, 2017;Kahan et al., 2011), and suggest that the current politicization of free speech reflects a contingent fact, i.e., that most recent episodes of intergroup disagreement have involved conservative affronts to progressive values (and not vice versa). ...
Chapter
Recent years have seen recurring episodes of tension between proponents of freedom of speech and advocates of the disenfranchised. Recent survey research attests to the ideological division in attitudes toward free speech, whereby conservatives report greater support for free speech than progressives do. Intrigued by the question of whether “canceling” is indeed a uniquely progressive tendency, we conducted a vignette-based experiment examining judgments of offensiveness among progressives and conservatives. Contrary to the dominant portrayal of progressives and conservatives, our study documented ideological symmetry in their evaluations of offensive speech. When faced with utterances whose content matters to them, both conservatives and progressives viewed outgroup speakers as more offensive than ingroup speakers. A second contribution of this chapter is to provide a deeper understanding of the cognitive mechanism implicated in evaluating outgroup speech as more offensive than ingroup speech. Our results suggest that perception of offensiveness is mediated by ascriptions of intent: we tend to attribute negative intent to the speaker whenever we deem their utterances to be offensive, even against the explicitly stated speaker’s background attitudes.
... This management, especially of internal resources, is akin to the psychological notion of self-regulation (eg, Azevedo et al., 2017). In particular, in the present analysis we highlight two resources emphasized in research on public engagement with data and online information: trust (Hendriks et al., 2016(Hendriks et al., , 2020Tynes et al., 2021), and emotion (Garcia et al., 2021;Kahan, 2017;Sinatra & Seyranian, 2016). Each is briefly reviewed below. ...
... Several studies point to the public's reliance on emotion as preventing them from engaging deeply with information and exploring alternatives, or distracting them from evidence that disconfirms their current positions (Garcia et al., 2021;Kahan, 2017;Sinatra & Lombardi, 2020). Yet, research on the role of emotion in regulating cognition (eg, Suri et al., 2013;Trevors et al., 2017) suggests that it may be inattention to one's emotions, rather than the experience of emotion, that is detrimental. ...
Article
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How do people reason with data to make sense of the world? What implications might everyday practices hold for data literacy education? We leverage the unique context of the COVID‐19 pandemic to shed light on these questions. COVID‐19 has engendered a complex, multimodal ecology of information resources, with which people engage in high‐stakes sensemaking and decision‐making. We take a relational approach to data literacy, examining how people navigate and interpret data through interactions with tools and other people. Using think‐aloud protocols, a diverse group of people described their COVID‐19 information‐seeking practices while working with COVID‐19 information resources they use routinely. Although participants differed in their disciplinary background and proficiency with data, they each consulted data frequently and used it to make sense of life in the pandemic. Three modes of interacting with data were examined: scanning, looking closer and puzzling through. In each of these modes, we examined the balance of agency between people and their tools; how participants experienced and managed emotions as part of exploring data; and how issues of trust mediated their sensemaking. Our findings provide implications for cultivating more agentic publics, using a relational lens to inform data literacy education. Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic Many people, even those with higher education, struggle with interpreting quantitative data representations. Social and emotional factors influence cognition and learning. People are often overwhelmed by the abundance of available information online. There is a need for data literacy approaches that are humanistic and relational. What this paper adds Everyday data practices can be variable and adaptable, and include engaging with data at different levels: scanning, looking closer, and puzzling through. Each of these modes involves different data practices. People, independently of their quantitative interpretation skills and disciplinary backgrounds, may engage differently with data (eg, avoiding versus delving deeper) based on their emotional responses, level of trust or interpersonal relationships that are evoked by the data. These everyday data practices have implications for people's sense of their own agency with data and involve emotional and trust‐based relationships that shape their interpretations of data. These relational aspects of data literacy suggest productive directions for data literacy education. Implications for practice and/or policy Data literacy can be taught as a process that is inherently relational, for example, by discussing the ways in which learners are personally connected to different data, what emotions these connections evoke, and how that affects the ways in which they attend to, trust and interpret the data. Data literacy education can cultivate a wider range of data practices at a variety of depths of interaction, rather than prioritizing only in‐depth inquiry. It may be helpful to include complex experiences with data sources that require learners to go beyond a binary “trustworthy/untrustworthy” distinction, so that learners can become more strategic, nuanced and intentional in forming a variety of trust relationships with different sources. Discussing how learners' everyday data practices interact with different data representations and tools can help them become more critically aware of the possible purposes, values, and risks associated with their everyday data practices.
... This view predicts that fake and unsupported information will nonetheless convince those who are already motivated to form certain kinds of belief. A neighboring view argues that, even when they engage in more reflective reasoning, humans are affected by "identity-protective" cognitive processes; such processes seek to defend certain core beliefs from outside influence (Kahan, 2017;Kahan, 2015;Van Bavel & Pereira, 2018). This view locates a conflict between two different, opposing goals within our cognition. ...
... This seems to be the case especially when the stories have little consequence for those who professedly endorse them. People may assent to them with conviction because there is little consequence in so doing (as suggested by Kahan, 2017;Kahan, 2015;Kahan, Peters, Dawson, & Slovic, 2017, p. 16). In other words, these attitudes are often behaviorally and cognitively encapsulated (e.g., Greene & Murphy, 2021, Mercier, 2020 notes how some of those who shared the fake Pizzagate 15 For evidence, see and where the authors find evidence of a disconnection between "judgments about [the] accuracy" of fake stories and the intention behind the act of sharing those stories on social media. ...
Article
Why do people share or publicly engage with fake stories? Two possible answers come to mind: (a) people are deeply irrational and believe these stories to be true; or (b) they intend to deceive their audience. Both answers presuppose the idea that people put the stories forward as true. But I argue that in some cases, these outlandish (yet also very popular) stories function as signals of one's group membership. This signaling function can make better sense of why, despite their unusual nature or lack of a factual basis, some of these stories are so widespread.
... In such instances, they reach smarter and more accurate conclusions that better align with their political preferences and preconceptions. Hence, people engage in expressive rationality, using their intelligence not to seek impartial truth but instead to ratify conclusions affirming their identity and worldview (Kahan, 2017). ...
Article
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Do people use their statistical expertise selectively to reach preferred conclusions when evaluating scientific evidence, with those more expert showing more preferential bias? We investigated this motivated numeracy account of evidence evaluation but came to a different account for biased evaluation. Across three studies (N = 2,799), participants interpreted numerical data from gun control intervention studies. In Studies 1 and 2, participants reached accurate conclusions more frequently from scientific data when those data aligned with their political preferences than when they did not, an attitude congeniality effect. This bias was unrelated to numerical ability (i.e., numeracy) and cognitive effort, although each variable predicted correct reasoning independently. Probing further, we found that attitude congeniality did not prompt people to discover valid statistical rationales for their more frequent correct conclusions. Rather, people came to right conclusions more often but for wrong reasons, suggesting why numerical ability need not be related to the congeniality effect. In Study 2, we showed this pattern was not due to forced guessing. In Study 3, we showed that the rationales, whether right or wrong, carried some weight over multiple scenarios, indicating that participants were not just expressive responding—that is, simply stating preferred conclusion regardless of the data. Statistical training did not reduce attitude congeniality biases. We suggest that people engage in “expressive rationalization” rather than “rationality” to reach preferred conclusions, finding convenient rationales for preferred conclusions that need not be valid, even though they can lead to conclusions that are.
... The term expressive rationality, proposed by Kahan (2017), indicates that species of motivated thinking that aims to obtain appreciation within the group (not the desire to gain a more accurate understanding of reality). Through expressive rationality, people express opinions that publicly state their preferences. ...
Article
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The research aims to identify the current situation of critical thinking (CT) in the Romanian mentality, from the perspective of interventions necessary to increase specific skills. We start from an analysis of the main approaches of CT specific to Western educational practices, these being the reference for a comparative analysis of the situation in Romania. Because we cannot exclude the possibility of the existence of certain CT specific contents camouflaged in the Romanian educational practices (that correspond to the western ones but they have other names), we carry out an analysis of the specific CT contents to observe the differences and possible similarities. Considering that CT involves the ability to discover boundaries (e.g.: discovering one's own cognitive boundaries), we look at the issue of potential boundaries. The approach includes analyzing the risk of CT marketing and the limits of specific CT interventions outlined by the mindsets of different communities. The research includes the evaluation of the existence of cultural limits possibility, starting from the question: "Is there a cultural place of CT (is it a value) in the Romanian mentality?". We evaluate the coherence of CT with social values, considering that in the absence of values that enhance its possibility, the probability of success of CT is diminished. Since we cannot a priori exclude the risk of importing models that do not match the mentality and values of this society, we analyze the problem from the perspective of the shapes without fond theory (a relevant questioning paradigm for Romanian society).
... But it has been also observed that human reasoning skills might not have evolved to find the best answers, even if we can use the skills for that purpose. Instead, humans show a tendency to defend their identity-defining beliefs [96,97]. More than that, human ancestors had solid reasons to be quite good at fitting inside their groups and, if possible, ascending socially inside them. ...
Article
Full-text available
Traditional models of opinion dynamics provide a simplified approach to understanding human behavior in basic social scenarios. However, when it comes to issues such as polarization and extremism, a more nuanced understanding of human biases and cognitive tendencies are required. This paper proposes an approach to modeling opinion dynamics by integrating mental models and assumptions of individuals agents using Bayesian-inspired methods. By exploring the relationship between human rationality and Bayesian theory, this paper demonstrates the usefulness of these methods in describing how opinions evolve. The analysis here builds upon the basic idea in the Continuous Opinions and Discrete Actions (CODA) model, by applying Bayesian-inspired rules to account for key human behaviors such as confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and human reluctance to change opinions. Through this, This paper updates rules that are compatible with known human biases. The current work sheds light on the role of human biases in shaping opinion dynamics. I hope that by making the model more realistic this might lead to more accurate predictions of real-world scenarios.
... e.g. Kahan et al. 2012;Kahan 2013;2015;2016a, b;). Kahan's case for ICT crucially depends on a numeracy effect -the effect is supposed to provide an essential piece of evidence supporting ICT over rival explanations. ...
Article
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In a series of very influential papers, Dan Kahan argues for “the identity protective cognition thesis”: the claim that politically motivated reasoning is a major factor explaining current levels of polarization over matters of fact, especially in the US. An important part of his case consists of experimental data supporting the claim that ideological polarization is more extreme amongst more numerate individuals. In this paper, we take a close look at how precisely this “numeracy effect” is supposed to come about. Working with Kahan’s own notion of motivated reasoning, we reconstruct the mechanism that according to him produces the effect. Surprisingly, it turns out to involve plenty of motivation to reason, but no motivated reasoning. This undermines the support he takes the numeracy effect to provide for the identity protective cognition hypothesis.
... Someone who views climate change as a matter of opinion, for exam ple, may simply dismiss relevant evidence. Beliefs about subjective phenomena can even become decoupled from evidence entirely and instead aligned with group membership (24,25) or identity more broadly (26,27). ...
Article
Full-text available
How we reason about objectivity—whether an assertion has a ground truth—has implications for belief formation on wide-ranging topics. For example, if someone perceives climate change to be a matter of subjective opinion similar to the best movie genre, they may consider empirical claims about climate change as mere opinion and irrelevant to their beliefs. Here, we investigate whether the language employed by journalists might influence the perceived objectivity of news claims. Specifically, we ask whether factive verb framing (e.g., "Scientists know climate change is happening") increases perceived objectivity compared to nonfactive framing (e.g., "Scientists believe [...]"). Across eight studies (N = 2,785), participants read news headlines about unique, noncontroversial topics (studies 1a–b, 2a–b) or a familiar, controversial topic (climate change; studies 3a–b, 4a–b) and rated the truth and objectivity of the headlines’ claims. Across all eight studies, when claims were presented as beliefs (e.g., “Tortoise breeders believe tortoises are becoming more popular pets”), people consistently judged those claims as more subjective than claims presented as knowledge (e.g., “Tortoise breeders know…”), as well as claims presented as unattributed generics (e.g., “Tortoises are becoming more popular pets”). Surprisingly, verb framing had relatively little, inconsistent influence over participants’ judgments of the truth of claims. These results demonstrate how, apart from shaping whether we believe a claim is true or false, epistemic language in media can influence whether we believe a claim has an objective answer at all.
... how credible scientists and their data are). In other words, who the experts are, as well as what counts as expert knowledge, varies for those who don't think like us (Kahan 2017;Kahan, Jenkins-Smith, and Braman 2011). One side typically expresses high confidence in their preferred sources while dismissing the other side's sources. ...
... For some recent examples of this literature, seeKogelmann and Ogden (2018) andVan der Vossen (2021).25 See for instanceKunda (1990), VonHippel and Trivers (2011),Kurzban (2012),Kahan (2017),Simler and Hanson (2017), andWilliams (2021). ...
Article
Full-text available
It is commonly held that political ignorance is rational, a response to the high costs and low benefits of acquiring political information. But many recent critics of the claim that political ignorance is rational instead urge that it is a simple consequence of agents not concerning themselves with the acquisition of political information whatsoever. According to such critics, political ignorance is inadvertent radical ignorance rather than a rational response to the incentives faced by agents in democracies. And since political ignorance is not a response to incentives, these critics urge, it cannot be ameliorated by incentivizing the acquisition of political information. This paper has two goals. First, I show that these seemingly competing accounts of political ignorance are in fact complementary, together explaining much political ignorance. Indeed, there is a sense in which political ignorance can be both rational and radical at the same time. Second, I more closely examine the relationship between incentives, kinds of political ignorance, and the acquisition of political information. On the one hand, from the fact that political ignorance is rational it does not follow that it can be overcome by incentivizing the acquisition of information. On the other hand, from the fact that political ignorance is radical it does not follow that it cannot be overcome by incentivizing the acquisition of information. Lastly, the complexity of the information in question is more relevant to determining whether ignorance can be overcome than whether such ignorance is rational or radical.
... The JQP model explicitly considers 'hot cognition' (System 1 thinking) as driving human judgment and therefore suggests that humans process information generally in an 'irrational' manner. While others argue that directional motivated reasoning strongly engages System 2 thinking (traditionally equated with this conception of 'rational' thinking), the general assumption that slow, deliberate thinking necessarily results in accuracy-seeking reasoning does not hold (Kahan 2016c). Importantly, from a risk governance perspective, at the societal level this conception of 'rationality' is typically reflected in calls for basing policymaking and regulation on 'objective' scientific evidence (Sanderson 2006). ...
Chapter
Full-text available
Empirical research in psychology and political science shows that individuals collect, process, and interpret information in a goal-driven fashion. Several theorists have argued that rather than striving for accuracy in their conclusions, individuals are motivated to arrive at conclusions that align with their previous beliefs, values, or identity commitments. The literature refers to this phenomenon broadly as ‘motivated reasoning’. In the context of risk governance, motivated reasoning can help to explain why people vary in their risk perceptions, evaluations, and preferences about risk management. But our current understanding of the phenomenon is incomplete, including the degree to which motivated reasoning should be considered rational and reasonable. Further, the research on motivated reasoning is largely unknown among risk practitioners. This chapter identifies key theoretical models of motivated reasoning, discusses the conceptual differences between them, and explores the implications of motivated reasoning for risk governance. Motivated reasoning is often labeled as ‘irrational’ and thus seen to prevent effective decision-making about risk, but this chapter challenges this assessment. The chapter concludes by identifying theoretical and empirical implications for researchers studying motivated reasoning and risk, as well as practical implications for policymakers and regulators involved in risk governance.
... Some studies argue from the expressive rationality theory's perspective and discover the fact that rationality doesn't affect individuals' initial attitudes in the specific context of vaccination because these attitudes are shaped based on their background values and beliefs (Tomljenovic et al., 2022). However, rationality does affect the process of justifying these attitudes, so individuals with higher rationality can better justify these attitudes once they are shaped, leading to stronger and more polarized views (Kahan, 2015;Kahan et al., 2012). ...
Article
During the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine hesitancy proved to be a major obstacle in efforts to control and mitigate the negative consequences of COVID-19. This study centered on the degree of polarization on social media about vaccine use and contributing factors to vaccine hesitancy among social media users. Examining the discussion about COVID-19 vaccine on the Weibo platform, a relatively comprehensive system of user features was constructed based on psychological theories and models such as the curiosity-drive theory and the big five model of personality. Then machine learning methods were used to explore the paramount impacting factors that led users into polarization. Findings revealed that factors reflecting the activity and effectiveness of social media use promoted user polarization. In contrast, features reflecting users' information processing ability and personal qualities had a negative impact on polarization. This study hopes to help healthcare organizations and governments understand and curb social media polarization around vaccine development in the face of future surges of pandemics.
... The term expressive rationality, proposed by Kahan (2017), indicates that species of motivated thinking that aims to obtain appreciation within the group (not the desire to gain a more accurate understanding of reality). Through expressive rationality, people express opinions that publicly state their preferences. ...
Preprint
Full-text available
The research aims to identify the current situation of critical thinking (CT) in the Romanian mentality, from the perspective of interventions necessary to increase specific skills. We start from an analysis of the main approaches of CT specific to Western educational practices, these being the reference for a comparative analysis of the situation in Romania. Because we cannot exclude the possibility of the existence of certain CT specific contents camouflaged in the Romanian educational practices (that correspond to the western ones but they have other names), we carry out an analysis of the specific CT contents to observe the differences and possible similarities. Considering that CT involves the ability to discover boundaries (e.g.: discovering one's own cognitive boundaries), we look at the issue of potential boundaries. The approach includes analyzing the risk of CT marketing and the limits of specific CT interventions outlined by the mindsets of different communities. The research includes the evaluation of the existence of cultural limits possibility, starting from the question: "Is there a cultural place of CT (is it a value) in the Romanian mentality?". We evaluate the coherence of CT with social values, considering that in the absence of values that enhance its possibility, the probability of success of CT is diminished. Since we cannot a priori exclude the risk of importing models that do not match the mentality and values of this society, we analyze the problem from the perspective of the shapes without fond theory (a relevant questioning paradigm for Romanian society).
... These results can be fruitfully explained by theories of identity-protective or cultural cognition (Kahan, 2017;Kahan et al., 2021), and suggest that the current politicization of free speech reflects a contingent fact: i.e., that most recent episodes of intergroup disagreement have involved conservative affronts to progressive values (and not vice versa). ...
Preprint
Full-text available
Recent years have seen recurring episodes of tension between proponents of freedom of speech and advocates of the disenfranchised. Recent survey research attests to the ideological division in attitudes toward free speech, whereby conservatives report greater support for free speech than progressives do. Intrigued by the question of whether "canceling" is indeed a uniquely progressive tendency, we conducted a vignette-based experiment examining judgments of offensiveness among progressives and conservatives. Contrary to the dominant portrayal of progressives and conservatives, our study documented ideological symmetry in their evaluations of offensive speech. When faced with utterances whose content matters to them, both conservatives and progressives viewed outgroup speakers as more offensive than ingroup speakers. A second contribution of this chapter is to provide a deeper understanding of the cognitive mechanism implicated in evaluating outgroup speech as more offensive than ingroup speech. Our results suggest that perception of offensiveness is mediated by ascriptions of intent: we tend to attribute negative intent to the speaker whenever we deem their utterances to be offensive, even against the explicitly stated speaker's background attitudes.
... Career information was also never as accessible for citizens as in the 21st century, yet intentionally or accidentally manipulated information (fake news) was also never so widely spread. Social media is a powerful tool for information management, but these platforms also maintain 'tribal or cultural cognition' (Kahan, 2015), often with fragmented career information that is professionally uncontrolled while certain closed social media groups maintain their own interpretations about careers. Closed groups, as in the tribal age, are often built around emotions rather than scientifically controlled facts. ...
... Career information was also never as accessible for citizens as in the 21st century, yet intentionally or accidentally manipulated information (fake news) was also never so widely spread. Social media is a powerful tool for information management, but these platforms also maintain 'tribal or cultural cognition' (Kahan, 2015), often with fragmented career information that is professionally uncontrolled while certain closed social media groups maintain their own interpretations about careers. Closed groups, as in the tribal age, are often built around emotions rather than scientifically controlled facts. ...
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The scope of this paper is mainly on identifying practitioner competences relating to initial training but it acknowledges also the increasing importance of in-service training and continuous professional development. It is a contribution to a Cedefop's collection. This collection is a step towards updating Cedefop's work on professionalising career guidance since the publication of Professionalising career guidance: practitioner competences and qualification routes in Europe over 10 years ago. The current papers consist of diverse authored contributions from independent CareersNet guidance experts and contributors to Cedefop’s 2020 CareersNet meeting. Changing career guidance delivery and career learning contexts, responding to widespread labour market changes and digital transformation of services, lead to new challenges, developments, and opportunities. Papers focus on the broad theme of professionalising the career guidance workforce and the particular competences fit for the digital and wider societal context. Not all authors place direct focus on technology-related themes. Attention is also paid to developments prior to, surrounding, or triggered by, the pandemic crisis. Theoretical/conceptual and overview papers are included, while several present illustrations of standards in national/regional guidance systems or particular training or service developments.
... However, as Dan Kahan points out, the purpose of some beliefs-especially those that are relevant to our identity-is not just to form accurate perceptions about the world. 19 In fact, some beliefs that we hold are central to the maintenance of our sense of self and our deeply held connections to important social groups, connections that often start in early childhood. 20 From this vantage, interpreting information through a lens of what is already believed and shared as true, even when it results in the often unconscious misinterpretation of the information at hand, is rational, in that it maintains stability of self and self-in-social group (more discussion later). ...
Article
Those interested in the intersection of science and Christianity, rightfully pay attention to specific issues in the landscape of science and religion. Despite progress made in science-religion scholarship, asking and answering thorny questions and unearthing new ones, it sometimes appears that these advances make little progress shifting the narrative in individuals or culture. In this article, I argue that for progress in difficult conversations, such as those between science and Christianity, we must acknowledge and account for the psychology of the individuals engaging in these conversations. This article discusses how normal psychological processes involved in reasoning may influence engagement with science-religion material. I conclude by offering several suggestions to increase the fruitfulness of these conversations.
... Career information was also never as accessible for citizens as in the 21st century, yet intentionally or accidentally manipulated information (fake news) was also never so widely spread. Social media is a powerful tool for information management, but these platforms also maintain 'tribal or cultural cognition' (Kahan, 2015), often with fragmented career information that is professionally uncontrolled while certain closed social media groups maintain their own interpretations about careers. Closed groups, as in the tribal age, are often built around emotions rather than scientifically controlled facts. ...
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This chapter argues that social and emotional skills (SEL) are relevant for schoolbased career guidance and counselling. It presents the results of an initiative in Romania in 2020 where a guide for school counsellors was developed based on an SEL approach to counselling for students in primary and secondary education.
... For example, self-affirmation theory maintains that individuals are motivated to keep up an image of oneself that is able to control important and adaptive outcomes in life [78][79][80]. They engage in "identity-protective reasoning" [81][82][83] and actively seek verification of self-views that they consider to be important and central to the self [84,85]. This tendency to stabilize positive aspects of personality may point to the existence of an explicit theoretical component that functions within many influential constructs such as self-esteem [86][87][88], self-concept [89], self-regard [90,91], and self-definition [92]. ...
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Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and within a very short period of time, teaching in the 2020 summer term changed from predominantly on-site to online instruction. Students suddenly faced having to adapt their learning process to new demands for which they may have had both insufficient digital skills and a lack of learning resources. Such a situation carries the risk that a substantial number of students become helpless. The aim of our empirical study was to test a hybrid framework of helplessness that includes both objective causes of helplessness and students’ subjective interpretations of them. Before lectures or courses began, students of a full-scale university were invited to participate in an online survey. The final sample consists of 1690 students. Results indicate that objective factors as well as their subjective interpretations contributed to the formation of helplessness.
... Race influences perceptions of social interactions (Dovidio, Kawakami, & Gaertner, 2002), culture influences predictions of stock market trends (Ji, Zhang, & Guo, 2008), one's favored sports team influences one's sports predictions (Simmons & Massey, 2012), and political factors influence interpretations of the facts in a court case (Kahan, 2010). More broadly, for cognitive (e.g., Yaniv & Milyavsky, 2007) or motivational reasons (e.g., Kahan, 2016;Kunda, 1990), people make judgments anchored around their own views, experiences, and identities (Krueger & Clement, 1994;Ross, Greene, & House, 1977). Nevertheless, scholars are generally cautious about touting social diversity's benefits, emphasizing the complexity of social diversity and its influence on group performance (Eagly, 2016;Jehn, Northcraft, & Neale, 1999;Mannix & Neale, 2005;Page, 2007). ...
Thesis
Statistically aggregating even a few estimates can yield improvements over individual judgments. But before aggregating, one must first decide whom to ask. One strategy might be to ask a socially diverse group, as diverse people are expected to contribute different perspectives. Related to this idea, the aims of this dissertation were threefold. The first aim was to determine the necessary conditions under which socially diverse crowds outperform homogeneous crowds for a given numerical judgment. The second aim was to test to what extent these conditions are met in real judgment tasks across a variety of social identities and judgment questions. The third aim was to determine how realistic laypeople are when appraising the accuracy advantages – or lack thereof – of socially diverse crowds. Chapter I reviews relevant literature on judgment, groups, and diversity. The discussion makes clear that the question of whether social diversity boosts crowd accuracy cannot be answered by the extensive literature on group diversity. The chapter nevertheless reviews that work and uses it to guide hypotheses while at the same time drawing distinctions between the questions asked here and the questions previously answered. A model in Chapter II tests when socially diverse crowds will outperform homogeneous ones. Findings suggest that diversity only improves crowd judgment when the relationship between group membership and judgment is at least moderate in size and when the true value lies between the distributions of the two groups. Chapter III then seeks to observe these conditions in real judgment tasks. Results indicate that the conditions for diversity benefits are rarely observed in empirical data. People’s social identities did not strongly bias their judgments across a wide variety of topics, and homogeneous and diverse crowds performed about equally well on numerical judgment tasks. Studies IV.1-IV.5 examined lay beliefs about diversity advantages. People typically overestimated the relative accuracy of socially diverse groups over homogeneous groups. That overestimation arose from people’s erroneous assumptions about meeting the “diversity benefit conditions” in the model (Studies IV.1 – IV.2). Specifically, people (1) overestimated the effect of social identity on judgment and (2) expected bracketing to occur to some degree. People expected diverse crowds to be optimal when they assumed these conditions are present, but not when they assumed that those conditions were absent. Studies IV.3-IV.5 suggest that people are willing to act on those erroneous beliefs. They are far more likely to choose advice from a diverse crowd, even when a homogeneous crowd would be more accurate (Study IV.3), and they are willing to pay more money to see advice from a diverse crowd than a homogeneous one when completing a numerical judgment task (Study IV.4-IV.5). Finally, Chapter V reviews the findings in the dissertation, discusses implications and limitations of the present work, and proposes future studies to address remaining questions.
... Following the outlined theoretical review, the question of the role of analytic thinking in motivated reasoning arises. One account that has gained significant traction is the identity-protective cognition account (also called "Motivated System 2 Reasoning"), and it postulates that engaging analytic thinking exacerbates motivated reasoning (Kahan, 2013(Kahan, , 2017b. Namely, individuals engage in deliberation and use their cognitive capacities to secure, protect, and defend their (often political) identities and their preexisting beliefs (Kahan et al., 2007;Drummond and Fischhoff, 2017). ...
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With much unknown about the new coronavirus, the scientific consensus is that human hosts are crucial to its spread and reproduction—the more people behave like regular socializing beings they are, the more likely it is that the virus will propagate. Hence, many nations worldwide have mandated physical-distancing measures. In the current preregistered research, we focus on examining two factors that may help explain differences in adherence to COVID-19 preventive behaviors and policy support across different countries—political orientation and analytic thinking. We positioned our research within the dual-process framework of human reasoning and investigated the role of cognitive reflection, open-minded thinking, and political ideology in determining COVID-19 responsible behavior (physical distancing and maintaining hygiene) and support for restrictive COVID-19 policies on a sample of 12,490 participants from 17 countries. We have not been able to detect substantial relationships of political orientation with preventive behaviors and policy support, and overall found no reliable evidence of politicization, nor polarization regarding the issue. The results of structural equation modeling showed that the inclination towards COVID-19 preventive measures and their endorsement were defined primarily by the tendency of open-minded thinking. Specifically, open-minded thinking was shown to be a predictor of all three criteria—avoiding physical contact, maintaining physical hygiene, and supporting COVID-19 restrictive mitigation policies. Cognitive reflection was predictive of lesser adherence to stricter hygiene and only very weakly predictive of lesser policy support. Furthermore, there was no evidence of these effects varying across political contexts. The mediation analysis suggested a partial mediation effect of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs on the relationships of open-mindedness and cognitive reflection with physical distancing (but not adherence to stricter hygiene) and COVID-19 policy support, albeit very small and significant primarily due to sample size. There was also no evidence of these effects varying across political contexts. Finally, we have not been able to find strong evidence of political orientation modifying the relationship between analytical thinking and COVID-19 behaviors and policy support, although we explored the pattern of these effects in the US and Canadian samples for exploratory purposes and comparison with other similar studies.
... Consistent with this view, Bell, Raihani, and Wilkinson (2019) have recently argued that explanations of delusions should incorporate a role for coalitional cognition (Boyer, Firat, and van Leeuwen 2015). Other theorists have suggested that we can signal our benevolence to fellow group members by the kinds of beliefs we adopt and express (Kahan 2016;Levy 2019). In this view, beliefs are like tattoos or uniforms, markers of group membership. ...
... But we have also observed that our reasoning skills might not have evolved to find the best answers, even if we can use them for that purpose. Instead, humans show a tendency to defend their identity-defining beliefs [96,97]. More than that, our ancestors had solid reasons to be good at fitting inside their groups and, if possible, ascend socially inside those. ...
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Traditional opinion dynamics models are simple and yet, enough to explore the consequences in basic scenarios. But, to better describe problems such as polarization and extremism, we might need to include details about human biases and other cognitive characteristics. In this paper, I explain how we can describe and use mental models and assumptions of the agents using Bayesian-inspired model building. The relationship between human rationality and Bayesian methods will be explored, and we will see that Bayesian ideas can indeed be used to explain how humans reason. We will see how to use Bayesian-inspired rules using the simplest version of the Continuous Opinions and Discrete Actions (CODA) model. From that, we will explore how we can obtain update rules that include human behavioral characteristics such as confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, or our tendency to change opinions much less than we should. Keywords: Opinion dynamics, Bayesian methods, Cognition, CODA, Agent-based models
... Consistent with this view, Bell, Raihani, and Wilkinson (2019) have recently argued that explanations of delusions should incorporate a role for coalitional cognition (Boyer, Firat, and van Leeuwen 2015). Other theorists have suggested that we can signal our benevolence to fellow group members by the kinds of beliefs we adopt and express (Kahan 2016;Levy 2019). In this view, beliefs are like tattoos or uniforms, markers of group membership. ...
Article
People's choices of food and drink, the attitudes they express, and the beliefs that they state are influenced by their political and other identities. At the same time, people's everyday choices depend on the context of available options in ways that are difficult to explain in terms of the choosers’ preferences and beliefs. Such phenomena provoke various questions. Do partisans or conspiracy theorists really believe what they are saying? Given the systematic inconsistency of their choices, in what sense do consumers prefer the items they purchase? More generally, how “flat” is the mind—do we come to decision‐making and choice with pre‐existing preferences, attitudes, and beliefs, or are our explanations for our behavior mere post‐hoc narratives? Here, we argue that several apparently disparate difficulties are rooted in a failure to separate psychologically different types of preferences, attitudes, and beliefs. We distinguish between underlying, inferred, and expressed preferences. These preferences may be expressed in different coordinate spaces and hence support different types of explanatory generalizations. Choices that appear inconsistent according to one type of preference can appear consistent according to another, and whether we can say that a person “really” prefers something depends on which type of preference we mean. We extend the tripartite classification to the case of attitudes and beliefs, and suggest that attributions of attitudes and beliefs may also be ambiguous. We conclude that not all of the mental states and representations that govern our behavior are context‐dependent and constructed, although many are.
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This study aimed to investigate the impact of online learning barriers on the scientific attitudes of Grade 9 students. The research involved 50 Grade 9 students from Plaridel Integrated National High School enrolled in online learning. Data was collected using the Online Learning Barriers Survey and the Scientific Attitude Instrument, administered via Google Forms with the assistance of class advisers. The analysis employed descriptive statistics and the Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient. Results indicated that individual and community barriers strongly influenced scientific attitudes. Students demonstrated high positive attitudes in curiosity and skepticism and moderately positive attitudes in humility. The study found no significant relationship between online learning barriers and scientific attitudes. In conclusion, there was insufficient statistical evidence to reject the null hypothesis, suggesting that online learning barriers do not significantly impact the scientific attitudes of the respondents.
Article
A growing body of research suggests that scientific and religious beliefs are often held and justified in different ways. In three studies with 707 participants, we examine the distinctive profiles of beliefs in these domains. In Study 1, we find that participants report evidence and explanatory considerations (making sense of things) as dominant reasons for beliefs across domains. However, cuing the religious domain elevates endorsement of nonscientific justifications for belief, such as ethical considerations (e.g., believing it encourages people to be good), affiliation (what loved ones believe), and intuition (what feels true in one's heart). Study 2 replicates these differences with specific scientific and religious beliefs held with equal confidence, and documents further domain differences in beliefs’ personal importance, openness to revision, and perceived objectivity. Study 3 replicates these differences, further finding that counter‐consensus beliefs about contentious science topics (such as climate change and vaccination) often have properties resembling religious beliefs, while counter‐religious beliefs about religion (e.g., “There is no God”) have properties that more closely resemble beliefs about science. We suggest that beliefs are held and justified within coherent epistemic frameworks, with individuals using different frameworks in different contexts and domains.
Article
Belief in a conspiracy theory may, for some, provide a social identity. Because of the nature of many conspiracy theories, social identities associated with such beliefs may be subject to varied and considerable threats. Whilst various mechanisms for dealing with social identity threat have received widespread attention, this paper introduces an as yet unexplored strategy – that of ‘motivated ignorance' – as a further mechanism for social identity maintenance. This is a behavior where individuals actively avoid freely available and accessible information in order to protect a social identity from information that may be harmful to the existence of the broader social group, and thus the individual’s own sense of self. Using a netnographic approach, we explored motivated ignorance related to the social identities formed around beliefs in the Flat Earth. Data revealed two categories of motivated ignorance. Firstly, that of ‘poisoning the well', where ignorance was justified by derogating the perceived epistemic quality of the information. The second was more instrumental, through ad hominem attacks on the source rather than the epistemic quality of information. The study suggests that motivated ignorance may be used as a strategy that may be used to protect social identities that are under threat, adding a further mechanism to the literature on coping with social identity threat.
Article
Controversial scientific issues, or socioscientific issues (SSIs), demand the consideration of more than scientific content when constructing decisions. The Justification for Knowing framework (JFK) was developed to categorize the information sources drawn upon when making SSI decisions within the academic domain of natural sciences. These information sources stem from personal sources (JPS), authoritative sources (JAS), or multiple sources (JMS). However, these sources may not explain the array of knowledge claims reflected upon during SSI decision making. This qualitative study aims to explore each JFK belief dimension across two SSIs and asks how contextual features are contributing to the selection of these beliefs. College students (N = 199) from various disciplines at a research‐intensive public institution responded to a modified Decision‐Making Questionnaire consisting of two SSI context scenarios. Participants responded to open‐ended prompts asking them if they support the proposed SSI decision and to explain their decision. Through two rounds of thematic coding, we found several subdimensions of JAS and found how students are utilizing JPS. Although the frequency of these broad sources did not differ between contexts, we saw differences within the types of sources reflected upon within each context. We also found that SSI context may ignite specific identity commitments that operate as a vehicle to the selection of knowledge sources when an individual is supporting their SSI decisions. The results of this study provide insight into specific information sources students rely upon when justifying their knowledge. Furthermore, this work emphasizes how identity commitments may be contributing to the selection of these information sources during SSI decision‐making tasks.
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Some collective irrationalities, like epistemically and pragmatically reckless Covid skepticism, are especially dangerous. While we normally have incentives to avoid dangerous beliefs, there are cases in which the danger of a belief is valuable. This is not captured by most accounts of motivated reasoning. I argue that Covid skepticism can function as a costly signal (handicap) so as to more effectively communicate social identity and commitment.
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In recent years, motivated reasoning has received significant attention across numerous areas of philosophy, including political philosophy, social philosophy, epistemology, moral psychology, philosophy of science, even metaphysics. At the heart of much of this interest is the idea that motivated reasoning (e.g., rationalization, wishful thinking, and self‐deception) is problematic, that it runs afoul of epistemic normativity, or is otherwise irrational. Is motivated reasoning epistemically problematic? Is it always? When it is, what is the nature of the violation? Philosophical projects on motivated reasoning require informed positions on these questions, demanding explicit engagement with fundamental issues about epistemic normativity and the ethics of belief. But attention to this has been limited, thwarting progress on a variety of critical questions. In this paper, I distinguish some of the key issues at play and discuss their interactions. At the end, I offer three methodological recommendations for future research on motivated reasoning.
Article
Concerns about public opinion-based threats to American democracy are often tied to evidence of partisan bias in factual perceptions. However, influential work on expressive survey responding suggests that many apparent instances of such bias result from respondents insincerely reporting politically congenial views in order to gain expressive psychological benefits. Importantly, these findings have been interpreted as “good news for democracy” because partisans who knowingly report incorrect beliefs in surveys can act on their correct beliefs in the real world. We synthesize evidence and commentary on this matter, drawing two conclusions: (1) evidence for insincere expressive responding on divisive political matters is limited and ambiguous and (2) when experimental manipulations in surveys reduce reports of politically congenial factual beliefs, this is often because such reported beliefs serve as flexible and interchangeable ways of justifying the largely stable allegiances that guide political behavior. The expressive value of acting on political commitments should be viewed as a central feature of the American political context rather than a methodological artifact of surveys.
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Rapid and comprehensive social change is required to mitigate pressing environmental issues such as climate change. Social tipping interventions have been proposed as a policy tool for creating this kind of change. Social tipping means that a small minority committed to a target behaviour can create a self-reinforcing dynamic, which establishes the target behaviour as a social norm. The possibility of achieving the large-scale diffusion of pro-environmental norms and related behaviours with an intervention delimited in size and time is tempting. Yet the canonical model of tipping, the coordination game, may evoke overly optimistic expectations regarding the potential of tipping, due to the underlying assumption of homogenous preferences. Relaxing this assumption, we devise a threshold model of tipping pro-environmental norm diffusion. The model suggests that depending on the distribution of social preferences in a population, and the individual cost of adopting a given pro-environmental behaviour, the same intervention can activate tipping, have little effect, or produce a backlash. Favourable to tip pro-environmental norms are widespread advantageous inequity aversion and low adoption costs. Adverse are widespread self-regarding preferences or disadvantageous inequity aversion, and high costs. We discuss the policy implications of these findings and suggest suitable intervention strategies for different contexts.
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One of the world-famous quotes of Winston S. ChurchilI is that statistics that I doctored myself opinion of many: statistics, and labour statistics, figures and the relationships between data sets are unknown to many. Conflicting statistical details that make it harder to interpret the information presented can be seen daily, such as in ubiquitous social media used by ordinary citizens. Yet, lifelong career guidance practitioners cannot be among those without adequate competences in understanding and interpreting labour market information and statistics and their production because career guidance systems and services mobilise these resources to support users. In arguing for increased attention to the current surrounding LMI, and, in particular, relevant statistics and databases, are critical in career guidance. Several points are presented about labour market statistics which career guidance systems and service development, as well as guidance practitioners, could usefully incorporate into the knowledge of practice. Two main themes are discussed: the nature of modern labour markets, and new ways of analysing labour market databases. Also presented is the context surrounding career guidance and its provision and practice, and the special role that trained career practitioners play in relation to the labour market and their clients.
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Accounts of public deliberation often refer to the notion of ‘facts’ or ‘accurate information.’ These epistemological notions, however, lack a stable, reliable definition used in research across disciplines or in practical politics across ideological fault lines. We consider realist definitions of fact within the analytical philosophy of language, specifically recent proposals to distinguish between facts of nature and socially constructed facts (Searle), and pragmatist definitions of fact (Peirce, Dewey). We argue that a pragmatist approach to facts as agreed upon circumstances that define a problem, i.e., consistent social constructivism, is more suitable for deliberative theory and practice. We use a case of The Citizens’ Initiative Review, where participants are explicitly asked to agree on a set of factual statements about the legislation at stake, as a clear example of cognitive difficulties that people experience when facts are treated as atomistic units with a context-independent truth value. We propose that in contexts of ideological pluralism facts can be defined as key parameters of problem situations that are consistently brought up in competing opinions. In such contexts, agreeing on facts will involve a complex syntactic pattern that brings these parameters into a coherent description of disagreement.
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We test three competing theoretical accounts invoked to explain the rise and spread of political (mis)information. We compare the ideological values hypothesis (people prefer news that bolster their values and worldviews); the confirmation bias hypothesis (people prefer news that fit their preexisting stereotypical knowledge); and the political identity hypothesis (people prefer news that allow them to believe positive things about political ingroup members and negative things about political outgroup members). In three experiments ( N = 1,420), participants from the United States read news describing actions perpetrated by their political ingroup or outgroup. Consistent with the political identity hypothesis, Democrats and Republicans were both more likely to believe news about the value-upholding behavior of their ingroup or the value-undermining behavior of their outgroup. Belief was positively correlated with willingness to share on social media in all conditions, but Republicans were more likely to believe and want to share apolitical fake news.
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En este artículo, realizamos una evaluación crítica de diferentes estrategias empleadas para reducir el sesgo a mi favor. Este sesgo cognitivo ha sido caracterizado como la tendencia a producir y evaluar argumentos de manera influenciada por las propias opiniones e ideologías. Proponemos una división en dos grandes conjuntos de estrategias: un primer conjunto, vinculado a las teorías de los procesos cognitivos duales, que apunta a mejorar las habilidades del razonamiento en solitario y un segundo conjunto, vinculado a las teorías evolucionistas sobre el pensamiento humano, que se basa en el intercambio de puntos de vista en contextos dialógicos de argumentación. Mostramos que estos dos conjuntos de estrategias están enfocados en activar el mismo tipo de procesos cognitivos, sólo que mientras que el primero intenta hacerlo mediante instrucciones directas para activar estos procesos en el razonamiento en solitario, el segundo lo hace mediante el intercambio argumentativo con pares. Asimismo, argumentamos que las estrategias pertenecientes al segundo conjunto pueden resultar más promisorias puesto que esta manera de razonar con pares podría replicarse con posterioridad en otras situaciones y contextos de producción y evaluación de argumentos. Finalmente, destacamos la importancia de seguir explorando estrategias destinadas a estimular las prácticas metacognitivas.
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We suggest that the effects of needs for security and certainty (NSC) on economic beliefs result from potentially competing dispositional (political engagement) and contextual (the country-level political narrative around the welfare state) influences. An analysis of data from the 2016 European Social Survey ( N = 40,870) showed that at low levels of political engagement, NSC is associated with left-wing beliefs. However, at high levels of political engagement, the NSC effects are conditional on a country’s welfare state model: NSC is related to right-wing beliefs in Liberal, Continental, and Southern types, but the effects are nonsignificant in the Nordic type and the reverse under the Eastern type. Analysis of 2018 round of the same survey ( N = 45,575) corroborated the main findings (except the Southern type for which NSC effects were nonsignificant). This study advances knowledge on the psychological roots of economic beliefs and contributes to the understanding of people’s political choices.
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This essay seeks to explain what the “science of science communication” is by doing it. Surveying studies of cultural cognition and related dynamics, it demonstrates how the form of disciplined observation, measurement, and inference distinctive of scientific inquiry can be used to test rival hypotheses on the nature of persistent public conflict over societal risks; indeed, it argues that satisfactory insight into this phenomenon can be achieved only by these means, as opposed to the ad hoc story-telling dominant in popular and even some forms of scholarly discourse. Synthesizing the evidence, the essay proposes that conflict over what is known by science arises from the very conditions of individual freedom and cultural pluralism that make liberal democratic societies distinctively congenial to science. This tension, however, is not an “inherent contradiction”; it is a problem to be solved — by the science of science communication understood as a “new political science” for perfecting enlightened self-government.
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Decision scientists have identified various plausible sources of ideological polarization over climate change, gun violence, national security, and like issues that turn on empirical evidence. This paper describes a study of three of them: the predominance of heuristic-driven information processing by members of the public; ideologically motivated reasoning; and the cognitive-style correlates of political conservativism. The study generated both observational and experimental data inconsistent with the hypothesis that political conservatism is distinctively associated with either un-reflective thinking or motivated reasoning. Conservatives did no better or worse than liberals on the Cognitive Reflection Test (Frederick, 2005), an objective measure of information-processing dispositions associated with cognitive biases. In addition, the study found that ideologically motivated reasoning is not a consequence of over-reliance on heuristic or intuitive forms of reasoning generally. On the contrary, subjects who scored highest in cognitive reflection were the most likely to display ideologically motivated cognition. These findings corroborated an alternative hypothesis, which identifies ideologically motivated cognition as a form of information processing that promotes individuals' interests in forming and maintaining beliefs that signify their loyalty to important affinity groups. The paper discusses the practical significance of these findings, including the need to develop science communication strategies that shield policy-relevant facts from the influences that turn them into divisive symbols of political identity.
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The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
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Human beings are prone to "misfearing": Sometimes they are fearful in the absence of significant danger, and sometimes they neglect serious risks. Misfearing is a product of bounded rationality, and it produces serious problems for individuals and governments. This essay is a reply to a review of Laws of Fear by Dan M. Kahan, Paul Slovic, Donald Braman, and John Gastil, who contend that "cultural cognition," rather than bounded rationality, explains people's fears. The problem with their argument is that cultural cognition is a product of bounded rationality, not an alternative to it. In particular, cultural differences are largely a product of two mechanisms. The first involves social influences, by which people's judgments are influenced by the actual or apparent views of others. The second involves "normative bias," by which people's factual judgments are influenced by their moral and political commitments. Once cultural cognition is thus understood, it can be seen that democratic governments need not respond to people's fears, regardless of their foundations. Democracies respond to people's values, but not their errors.
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“Cultural cognition” refers to the unconscious influence of individuals’ group commitments on their perceptions of legally consequential facts. We conducted an experiment to assess the impact of cultural cognition on perceptions of facts relevant to distinguishing constitutionally protected “speech” from unprotected “conduct.” Study subjects viewed a video of a political demonstration. Half the subjects believed that the demonstrators were protesting abortion outside of an abortion clinic, and the other half that the demonstrators were protesting the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy outside a campus recruitment facility. Subjects of opposing cultural outlooks who were assigned to the same experimental condition (and who thus had the same belief about the nature of the protest) disagreed sharply on key “facts” – including whether the protesters obstructed and threatened pedestrians. Subjects also disagreed sharply with those who shared their cultural outlooks but who were assigned to the opposing experimental condition (and hence had a different belief about the nature of the protest). These results supported the study hypotheses about how cultural cognition would affect perceptions pertinent to the “speech”-“conduct” distinction. We discuss the significance of the results for constitutional law and liberal principles of self-governance generally.
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This paper considers how identity, a person's sense of self, affects economic outcomes. We incorporate the psychology and sociology of identity into an economic model of behavior. In the utility function we propose, identity is associated with different social categories and how people in these categories should behave. We then construct a simple game-theoretic model showing how identity can affect individual interactions. The paper adapts these models to gender discrimination in the workplace, the economics of poverty and social exclusion, and the household division of labor. In each case, the inclusion of identity substantively changes conclusions of previous economic analysis.
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It is proposed that motivation may affect reasoning through reliance on a biased set of cognitive processes--that is, strategies for accessing, constructing, and evaluating beliefs. The motivation to be accurate enhances use of those beliefs and strategies that are considered most appropriate, whereas the motivation to arrive at particular conclusions enhances use of those that are considered most likely to yield the desired conclusion. There is considerable evidence that people are more likely to arrive at conclusions that they want to arrive at, but their ability to do so is constrained by their ability to construct seemingly reasonable justifications for these conclusions. These ideas can account for a wide variety of research concerned with motivated reasoning.
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Research on political judgment and decision-making has converged with decades of research in clinical and social psychology suggesting the ubiquity of emotion-biased motivated reasoning. Motivated reasoning is a form of implicit emotion regulation in which the brain converges on judgments that minimize negative and maximize positive affect states associated with threat to or attainment of motives. To what extent motivated reasoning engages neural circuits involved in “cold” reasoning and conscious emotion regulation (e.g., suppression) is, however, unknown. We used functional neuroimaging to study the neural responses of 30 committed partisans during the U.S. Presidential election of 2004. We presented subjects with reasoning tasks involving judgments about information threatening to their own candidate, the opposing candidate, or neutral control targets. Motivated reasoning was associated with activations of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, insular cortex, and lateral orbital cortex. As predicted, motivated reasoning was not associated with neural activity in regions previously linked to cold reasoning tasks and conscious (explicit) emotion regulation. The findings provide the first neuroimaging evidence for phenomena variously described as motivated reasoning, implicit emotion regulation, and psychological defense. They suggest that motivated reasoning is qualitatively distinct from reasoning when people do not have a strong emotional stake in the conclusions reached.
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Taber and Lodge offer a powerful case for the prevalence of directional reasoning that aims not at truth, but at the vindication of prior opinions. Taber and Lodge's results have far-reaching implications for empirical scholarship and normative theory; indeed, the very citizens often seen as performing “best” on tests of political knowledge, sophistication, and ideological constraint appear to be the ones who are the most susceptible to directional reasoning. However, Taber and Lodge's study, while internally beyond reproach, may substantially overstate the presence of motivated reasoning in political settings. That said, focusing on the accuracy motivation has the potential to bring together two models of opinion formation that many treat as competitors, and to offer a basis for assessing citizen competence.
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This paper presents a compact synthesis of the study of cognition in legal decisionmaking. Featured dynamics include the story-telling model (Pennington & Hastie, 1986), lay prototypes (Smith, 1991), motivated cognition (Sood, 2012), and coherence-based reasoning (Simon, Pham, Le, & Holyoak, 2001). Unlike biases and heuristics understood to bound or constrain rationality, these dynamics identify how information shapes a variety of cognitive inputs-from prior beliefs to perceptions of events to the probative weight assigned new information-that rational decisionmaking presupposes. The operation of these mechanisms can be shown to radically alter the significance that jurors give to evidence, and hence the conclusions they reach, within a Bayesian framework of information processing. How these dynamics interact with the professional judgment of lawyers and judges, the paper notes, remains in need of investigation. Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier B.V.
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Seeming public apathy over climate change is often attributed to a deficit in comprehension. The public knows too little science, it is claimed, to understand the evidence or avoid being misled. Widespread limits on technical reasoning aggravate the problem by forcing citizens to use unreliable cognitive heuristics to assess risk. An empirical study found no support for this position. Members of the public with the highest degrees of science literacy and technical reasoning capacity were not the most concerned about climate change. Rather, they were the ones among whom cultural polarization was greatest. This result suggests that public divisions over climate change stem not from the public’s incomprehension of science but from a distinctive conflict of interest: between the personal interest individuals have in forming beliefs in line with those held by others with whom they share close ties and the collective one they all share in making use of the best available science to promote common welfare.
Book
Human beings are consummate rationalizers, but rarely are we rational. Controlled deliberation is a bobbing cork on the currents of unconscious information processing, but we have always the illusion of standing at the helm. This book presents a theory of the architecture and mechanisms that determine when, how, and why unconscious thoughts, the coloration of feelings, the plausibility of goals, and the force of behavioral dispositions change moment-by-moment in response to “priming” events that spontaneously link changes in the environment to changes in beliefs, attitudes, and behavior. Far from the consciously directed decision-making assumed by conventional models, political behavior is the result of innumerable unnoticed forces, with conscious deliberation little more than a rationalization of the outputs of automatic feelings and inclinations.
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Despite Miller's (1969) now-famous clarion call to "give psychology away" to the general public, scientific psychology has done relatively little to combat festering problems of ideological extremism and both inter- and intragroup conflict. After proposing that ideological extremism is a significant contributor to world conflict and that confirmation bias and several related biases are significant contributors to ideological extremism, we raise a crucial scientific question: Can debiasing the general public against such biases promote human welfare by tempering ideological extremism? We review the knowns and unknowns of debiasing techniques against confirmation bias, examine potential barriers to their real-world efficacy, and delineate future directions for research on debiasing. We argue that research on combating extreme confirmation bias should be among psychological science's most pressing priorities. © 2009 Association for Psychological Science.
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Two of the most important sources of catastrophic risk are terrorism and climate change. The United States has responded aggressively to the risk of terrorism while doing very little about the risk of climate change. For the United States alone, the cost of the Iraq war is now in excess of the anticipated cost of the Kyoto Protocol. The divergence presents a puzzle; it also raises more general questions about both risk perception and the public demand for legislation. The best explanation for the divergence emphasizes bounded rationality. Americans believe that aggressive steps to reduce the risk of terrorism promise to deliver significant benefits in the near future at acceptable cost. By contrast, they believe that aggressive steps to reduce the risk of climate change will not greatly benefit American citizens in the near future, and they are not willing to pay a great deal to reduce that risk. This intuitive form of cost-benefit analysis is much influenced by behavioral factors, including the availability heuristic, probability neglect, outrage, and myopia. All of these contribute, after 9/11, to a willingness to support significant steps to respond to terrorism and to relative indifference to climate change. It follows that Americans are likely to support such steps in response to climate change only if one of two conditions is met: the costs of those steps can be shown to be acceptably low or new information, perhaps including a salient incident, indicates that Americans have much to gain from risk reduction in the relatively near future.
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There is a culture war in America over science. Why? And what should be done to promote the ability of culturally diverse citizens to agree on how science can inform their common interests in health, security, and prosperity? This article uses the findings of Cultural Cognition Project studies to address these question.
Motivated numeracy and enlightened self-government. Cultural Cognition Project Working Paper No
  • D M Kahan
  • E Peters
  • E Dawson
  • P Slovic