Dan Kahan, who studies how our culture influences our perceptions of science at Yale’s Cultural Cognition Project, has released a new research note that looks at the interplay of open-mindedness, information and climate denial.
Although Kahan has been criticized in the past for hewing too closely to his cultural cognition theories and disparaging other approaches more focused on, for example, the impact of consensus-based messaging, his research remains an important part of understanding why conservative leaning-people have embraced climate denial.
The new note looks at the “perverse effects of actively open-minded thinking,” or in plain language, how more open-minded conservatives are actually more likely to reject climate science the more they learn about it. One could say that their minds are open to denial, or to the rationalization process that aligns their preconceived notions and cultural preferences (that believes that climate change is a liberal concern) to the information they learn. It seems to be something of an affirmation of the “back-fire effect,” which tells us that when you try to bust a myth, it can have the perverse effect of reinforcing it for those that believe it.
This is interesting, as Kahan’s cultural cognition theory has sometimes been seen as at odds with those whose work has found that consensus-based messaging is effective. One of the biggest proponents of this theory is John Cook, who led the 97% consensus papers effort and co-wrote the Debunking Handbook, which calls out the backfire effect and provides ways to work around it.
Anyway, it seems from this new research note, that even though open-mindedness makes a person seek out new and contradictory information, ultimately we still process that information in a way that leads to further polarization. So no matter what we do, unfortunately it looks like people will only become further entrenched in their own positions instead of coming together with all we have in common.
So knowledge may be power, but unfortunately it’s a power that drives some to denial.
Which is, as the note describes, pretty perverse.
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