Must-read Chris Mooney article on motivated reasoning

My friend Chris Mooney, a freelance science journalist, has just published a fantastic article in Mother Jones on "The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science":

[A]n array of new discoveries in psychology and neuroscience has ... demonstrated how our preexisting beliefs, far more than any new facts, can skew our thoughts and even color what we consider our most dispassionate and logical conclusions. This tendency toward so-called "motivated reasoning [3]" helps explain why we find groups so polarized over matters where the evidence is so unequivocal: climate change, vaccines, "death panels," the birthplace and religion of the president [4] (PDF), and much else. It would seem that expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts.

Chris brings together a wide range of studies and evidence to show how our pre-existing attitudes help shape the conclusions we reach. To my mind, it's the best popular article on what we know about motivated reasoning -- check it out.

(Disclosure: I talked with Chris about the article, and my research with Jason Reifler is cited in the piece.)

Comments

[David in Cal]

I agree with much of Chris Mooney's article, but will focus this comment on two area of disagreement.

Mooney wrote:

"When political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler showed subjects fake newspaper articles...they found that conservatives were more likely than before to believe the claim."

It's not clear to me that people ought to be convinced by fake evidence. ISTM that a person faced with fake evidence might reason that if an advocate needs to resort to fake evidence, his case must be very weak indeed.

Second, Mooney's discussion of global warming shows that Mooney himself is not immune from the psychological condition he describes. E.g., he complains about cherry picking Climate-gate e-mails. But, cherry-picking is appropriate when looking for specific instances of misconduct.

Some e-mails show that some warmists conspired to prevent the publication of papers with opposing views. Some e-mails showed that some warmists conspired to hide data of their own that would have tended to refute the hockey stick theory. Even if hundreds of other e-mails were perfectly innocent, these 'cherry-picked' ones are evidence of scientific misconduct.

[bnyhan]

David - There was no way for respondents to know the articles were fake, and even if they did, that wouldn't explain the different reaction to the articles depending on which version of the article they saw. See http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bnyhan/nyhan-reifler.pdf for details.

[David in Cal]

Brendan, yes my comment about your study was meant as a bit of a joke. I think your findings are valid.

However, I also think more study could be done regarding who provides the corrective information. E.g., if Fox News were to announce that government support for ethanol is not a good environmental policy, I doubt that many liberals would be convinced to stop supporting such a program. However, when Al Gore recently made such a statement, I think many liberals believed him.

I suspect that many conservatives would distrust a college professor, presumably a liberal, just as many liberals would distrust Fox News.

[David in Cal]

Motivated reasoning can be illustrated by the difference between Dems and Reps regarding global warming.

Despite the growing scientific consensus that global warming is real, Americans have become increasingly polarized on the environmental issue, according to a first-of-its-kind study led by a Michigan State University researcher.

The gap between Democrats and Republicans who believe global warming is happening increased 30 percent between 2001 and 2010 – a “depressing” trend that’s essentially keeping meaningful national energy policies from being considered, argues sociologist Aaron M. McCright.

I think McCright is correct about the growing polarization. However, he himself is a good example of one who opinion is unchanged by contrary facts. E.g., he refers to the supposed "growing scientific consensus that global warming is real." By "belief in global warming", I think he means not only belief that the globe has warmed in the last 200 years, but the belief that warming will continue, that man's activity is the primary cause of the warming, that warming will be an environmental disaster, and that proposed CO2 reduction schemes such as cap and trade can save us from disaster.

McCright has no evidence that the degree of scientific agreement in these warming beliefs is "growing". There's no measure of the annual change in magnitude of the scientific concensus of these beliefs. In fact, during the last few years, there has been a larger number of published scientific papers questioning aspects of warming theory. I think the facts say that although scientific belief in warmism remains widespread, the degree of scientific agreement has been diminishing. However, the allegation that it's "growing" seems to be one held by McCright regardless of the facts.

McCright's belief in global warming appears unaffected by the temperature of the globe. Although there has been a long-term warming trend, the global temperature has actually dropped slightly since 1998. Some doomsday predictions made a decade ago about sea level rise, sea ice, snowfall, etc. have not come true. The recent (possibly temporary) change in the warming trend may well account for the growing number of skeptics, but it has no impact on McCright, who simply ignores it.

I doubt that McCright has done an independent scientific review of all available scientific literature. He simply believes what the warmists say, just as many conservatives simply believe what the skeptics say. The supposed solutions to global warming involve growth in government control -- policies liberals generally favor and conservatives generally oppose. It's not surprising that both sides have adjusted their beliefs to a version of science that supports their favored policies.

I think polarization will continue until liberal opinion leaders take a public skeptical position or conservative leaders like take a public warmist position. Conservatives are not going to believe Gore and liberals are not going to believe Limbaugh.

[JP]

I wonder what effect there would be if the examples of motivated reasoning were regarding liberal myths vs. conservative myths given the article was published in Mother Jones (a lefty mag). Mooney should have had all the examples slant towards one side and published in Mother Jones as well as The National Review and compared the letters to the editor.