Don't give me the facts,
I'm reactionary
Giving people the facts can backfire if they hold strong beliefs contradicted by those facts.
The last five decades of political science have definitively established that most modern-day Americans lack even a basic understanding of how their country works. In 1996, Princeton University’s Larry M. Bartels argued, “the political ignorance of the American voter is one of the best documented data in political science.”On its own, this might not be a problem: People ignorant of the facts could simply choose not to vote. But instead, it appears that misinformed people often have some of the strongest political opinions. A striking recent example was a study done in the year 2000, led by James Kuklinski of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He led an influential experiment in which more than 1,000 Illinois residents were asked questions about welfare — the percentage of the federal budget spent on welfare, the number of people enrolled in the program, the percentage of enrollees who are black, and the average payout. More than half indicated that they were confident that their answers were correct — but in fact only 3 percent of the people got more than half of the questions right. Perhaps more disturbingly, the ones who were the most confident they were right were by and large the ones who knew the least about the topic. (Most of these participants expressed views that suggested a strong antiwelfare bias.)
Studies by other researchers have observed similar phenomena when addressing education, health care reform, immigration, affirmative action, gun control, and other issues that tend to attract strong partisan opinion. Kuklinski calls this sort of response the “I know I’m right” syndrome, and considers it a “potentially formidable problem” in a democratic system. “It implies not only that most people will resist correcting their factual beliefs,” he wrote, “but also that the very people who most need to correct them will be least likely to do so.”
What’s going on? How can we have things so wrong, and be so sure that we’re right? Part of the answer lies in the way our brains are wired.Could this be like when bible-based beliefs encounter biblical scholarship?
Read it here in The Boston Globe.
Let's try out theory.
Do many Tea Party leaders support the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act?
Now read this post.
Have your views of Tea Party leaders changed?
Is the Obama administration making it easier for a woman to make her own choices about her reproductive health?
The comment about the anti-welfare bias indicates that the majority of those people are reactionary.
Is this true?
That so many are uneducated and opinionated wouldn't matter quite so much if both sides were equally affected.
Posted by Erika Baker![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/nav-commenters.gif)
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July 24, 2010 4:29 AM
My hunch is that Darwin is the start of where FACTS start to be seen as prima facie ENEMIES by those w/ highly ideological views (in this case, Fundamentalist ones).
Studies consistently show that about 1/3 of the American electorate is conservative. It is this body, which I suspect is most highly "fact-resistant". By which I mean NOT ONLY will they "consider the source" of the fact (heck, I do that too: just w/ very different sources!), but that even a TRUSTED "fact" can be compartmentalized away, if inconvenient to the world-view.
What I found most interesting about the Boston Globe article, was the hypothesis that so many are resistant to EVER admitting they are wrong.
Perhaps for those of us who would LIKE to see political discouse improve, we need to MODEL this behavior? Start beginning our political discussions with "I admit I was wrong about ...", in order to create space for others to do so also?
JC Fisher
...wracking my brain, for a subject about which "I was wrong." ;-/
Posted by tgflux![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/nav-commenters.gif)
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July 25, 2010 2:26 AM