Could it be that all this talk about how best to frame argument is pointless? It would if our capacity to change our minds in the face of new information was genetically determined.
If evolutionary psychology doesn't turn your crank, give this post a miss. I'm not convinced myself that there's a lot of merit to this particularly line of inquiry. But just in case...
In a comment posted to one Chris "Intersection" Mooney's recent efforts to explain his support for "framing" science, PZ "Pharygula" Myers gets to the nub of the problem:
Science educators need to get people to accept new ideas, and they have the goal of having people learn more.... We want to challenge people, we want to annoy them and shake them up, we want to make them rethink, we want to make them absorb new information and come out of the process smarter.
Yes, we do. But maybe there are those on whom such tactics are useless. No matter how hard we try, they just won't listen to reason, because they are hard-wired that way. At least, that's the tentative conclusion to be drawn from a couple of disparate analyses.
First, there's a new book by Salon staffer Farhad Manjoo. em>True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society posits, among other things, that there's a difference between the ability of conservatives and liberals to integrate new ideas into their brains. In an interview with NPR's On the Media, Manjoo claimed:
People have studied how conservative blogs, for instance, link to each other and how liberal blogs link to each other, and they found that the people on the right generally have a tighter network and are more likely to indulge in only those sources. And this has been a longstanding pattern where psychologists have noticed that people on the right are more efficient at filtering out things that kind of don't really support their views.
Next we have a story from New Scientist on how new studies are suggesting those political differences may be genetically determined. In "Are political leanings all in the genes?" Jim Giles writes that
...twin studies suggest that opinions on a long list of issues, from religion in schools to nuclear power and gay rights, have a substantial genetic component. The decision to vote rather than stay at home on election day may also be linked to genes. Neuroscientists have also got in on the act, showing that liberals and conservatives have different patterns of brain activity.
Giles writes of a 2003 meta-analysis at NYU of 88 studies looking for "a correlation between personality traits and political orientation." Among John Jost's findings, published in American Psychologist (Vol 61(7) 651-670) was
People who scored highly on a scale measuring fear of death, for example, were almost four times more likely to hold conservative views. Dogmatic types were also more conservative, while those who expressed interest in new experiences tended to be liberals. Jost's review also noted research showing that conservatives prefer simple and unambiguous paintings, poems and songs.
If there is anything to these studies, we here at ScienceBlogs looking for the best way to persuade those who reject the conclusions of science that they're wrong may be wasting our time. I mean, how hard are we going to have to work if our targets genes are working against us?
I suppose Chris and Matt and everyone else pushing "framing science" might argue that only a method that tries to slide new ideas stealthily past these genetic filters stands a chance of succeeding. But then we're back to my point that anything more than a standard appeal to the target's sensibilities amounts to spin at best and misrepresentative propaganda at worst. And that's simply not going to fly for many scientists.
Indeed, the only way around the problem might lie in good old natural selection. Liberals might have out-breed the conservatives. Unfortunately, and as we all know, the more conservative you are the less likely you are to embrace contraception and small family size. At this point, I get depressed.
- Log in to post comments
I'd want a lot of evidence before I would accept that conservatism has a genetic component. A superficial reading of this post suggested to me that these works could just be trying to marginalize political views by linking them to genetics -- the same way many conservative outlets use race, sexuality, etc. I have a rather progressive outset (as if one could really sum up one's political views with one of those labels), but barring something pretty compelling in those studies, this sounds just like a divisive political strategy from the right.
I don't quite buy the genetic answer (and I'm a molecular geneticist). I do think, however, that there is no great incentive to be scientifically literate. In fact having an interest in science, having a career in research etc, is not easily supportable compared to others.
In other words the environment for science is very restricted in terms of the job numbers it can sustain and has low pay and bad job security. The alternatives of business, law, services etc don't have this problem - which is why you can have a whole clan of bigots like the 'God hates fags' Phelps who become lawyers and have no problem supporting themselves.
Unfortunately I don't have an answer to this problem. Its not a religious question - I live in Sweden where religion isn't an issue but the environment for careers in science is just as restricted. I guess its a problem with science as a whole having developed from the hobbies of rich men rather than from a profession.
It sounds plausible that some people could be born more resistant to change; I'm not qualified to judge genetic arguments. Nevertheless, you seem to be on the brink of saying it's hopeless they will ever change, which clearly cannot be true. There was a time when no one was a Christian, whereas most of our conservatives seem to be now. Thus, all this would mean is that it's going to be harder to change some people than is desirable, it doesn't invalidate the arguments over what is the best method.
The time when no one was a Christian was roughly B.C., right? I too am a molecular biologist/geneticist, which I think makes me more inclined to be skeptical of evo psych claims because they seem to fall far short of that much sought after "mechanism" in functional genomics. I equate evo psych more with what philosophers do than what scientists do.
The primary problem with these sorts of claims is that what constitutes being "conservative" or "liberal" varies in both time and place. And many even "conservative" policies are in fact original. For example, No Child Left Behind in the United States was more or less a new idea. (I'm not commenting on its merits simply on its novelty as a set of ideas). Furthermore, anecdotally at least peoples on both extremes of the poltical spectrum are about as unwilling to listen to the possibility that they might be wrong. While there might be particular issues about American conservatism that make it more prone to certain attitudes and behavior, the overall situation is clearly much more complicated than a small set of genes. And if we are simply saying that some genes may play a role, that's hardly surprising or a very interesting claim by itself.
Yeah, but it's not like they come ready-made with these views. If some people are more genetically predisposed to disregard new evidence/change their views, that only affects changes during their lifetime. It leaves room for a whole ton of shifting in the next generation (which is where I'm doing my work, as a high school teacher).
I mean, I'm guessing that this is people who have a higher anxiety response to uncertainty and cognitive dissonance, so they get really freaked out by change, so they gravitate to places that don't change. And that's totally understandable. But what if those people were raised in some extreme liberal home, or by scientists, or something? Might they just end up intolerant of dissent to liberal views, and gravitate toward little pods of ideological conformity? I've sure seen people who did that.
On the other hand, such a genotype would gravitate towards conservative churches/cults, so as generations went on they'd end up being that way.