My recent decision to leave Facebook was one I didn’t take lightly. As I explained at the time, there wasn’t any unique revelation or watershed moment behind the decision. It’s more that I had wanted to step away for some time and felt it was the right thing to do, but the very nature of Facebook (no doubt combined with a lack of self-control on my part) delayed my exit.

As if on cue, The Social Dilemma (trailer) released on Netflix this past Wednesday. Just a happy coincidence of course that this documentary came out so soon after leaving a platform that consumed countless hours of my life over the past decade, but it served up a nice dose of catharsis, I must say. I recommend it both for those who may be considering their own departure from certain apps and websites and for those who’d like a refresher on the sweeping impacts these spaces continue to have on connected society.

There’s nothing particularly revelatory on offer in its hour and a half runtime. In the current attention economy, major players like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest view humans, us, as an extractable resource. We — explicitly our preferences, desires, beliefs, impulses, and the built-in potential for these elements to be dialed up or down — are the product being sold, while advertisers are the customers. Again, nothing too earth-shattering; the basic blueprint remains essentially unchanged from the launch of Facebook 16 years ago.

What elevates this production over previous attempts at consciousness-raising, I think, are the messengers you hear from. Former Design Ethicist for Google, Tristan Harris, takes center stage as one of the leading voices in this space, having put out a number of TED talks and testified before Congress about the misaligned incentives baked into social media and how its tendency to bring out the worst in society is a feature and not a bug. You hear from senior executives at Facebook. You hear from the former president of Pinterest. You hear from literally the guy who invented the Facebook “Like” button. These aren’t bit players in Silicon Valley or industry outsiders. These are the experts who built and helped grow these platforms — and who now harbor grave doubts their creations are a force for good.

While the information they impart here shouldn’t be too surprising to those with some insight into how these platforms work, it’s nonetheless a compelling synthesis of the variegated problems that have emerged over time: increased ideological polarization, the exacerbation of fake news, election hacking, and other manipulation by bad actors. While these problems existed in some form or another prior to the inception of large-scale social networks, never before have there been tools so uniquely well-positioned to exploit vulnerabilities in our psychology. As one of the featured experts notes, “It’s not that highly motivated propagandists didn’t exist before, it’s that the platforms of today spread manipulative narratives with phenomenal ease — and without very much money.”

A rebuttal we often hear from people who argue the concerns around these spaces are overblown is that we will eventually adapt to social media, in much the same way we’ve always learned to live with and accommodate the next big thing. After all, we had to adapt to newspapers, radio, film and television, and the pre-social media internet, and this is merely the next evolution of that trend.

Tristan Harris and others address this argument head-on by emphasizing an important distinction that sets social media apart from earlier innovations. He uses the analogy of a bicycle. When the bicycle was invented, it didn’t feed addictive tendencies, it didn’t polarize society, it didn’t elevate the fake news crisis, and there weren’t concerns it would erode the fabric of democracy. That’s because a bicycle is simply a tool, a dormant device that wants nothing from us. Social media and other networked applications, in contrast, have their own goals and their own mechanisms by which to pursue those goals. Rather than a passive, tool-based technology, these are persuasion-based technologies that actively manipulate you by using your own psychology against you. The current state of our social media represents a true paradigm shift in how humanity interacts with the world and with each other.

As I conveyed in my Facebook farewell two weeks ago, because the algorithms driving these platforms prioritize overall engagement over social harmony — according to the company’s own admission and internal research — there’s an inbuilt tendency to divide users. Harris cites a well known study which found that fake stories on Twitter spread 6x faster than a true story. The takeaway is clear: fake news and sensational lies boost engagement; the truth, meanwhile, is boring. And thanks to machine learning and recommendation engines (the heart and soul of these mediums), Twitter & Co.’s facility for spreading falsehood improves by the day. Alas, this certainly helps explain absurd offline phenomena like “Pizzagate” and the notion that eating Chinese food can give you coronavirus.

As an aside, I also couldn’t help but notice an unmentioned subtext here that this whole corrosive situation in which we find ourselves came about by and large through the collective efforts of white men (and women) who unleashed these technological behemoths on society, while the divisions and other society-engulfing downstream consequences of their actions have been felt largely by Black and other minority groups across America. This isn’t an angle explored in the documentary, but I do think it’s an important one, especially as we contemplate how to best improve these platforms going forward.

Anyway, it’s worth checking out if you have the time.

Feature image credit: GETTY

 
 
One argument out there is that we on the left shouldn’t feel bad about restricting ourselves to left-leaning echo chambers and social bubbles because there is nothing to gain from engaging conservatives given the current state of play in American politics. Here I want to defend two reasons why this might be improvident, even dangerous, both intellectually and socially, in the long term. But before we get there, I need to issue two caveats.

(1) Some folks truly are a lost cause and aren’t worth the effort. As someone who has wrestled with climate politics for several years, I’ll be the first to recognize that dialogue is no panacea for consensus. There are people who will forever lie beyond the reach of reason, and we need to be honest about that. Depending on the arena of discourse we’re referring to, I peg this portion of the population at somewhere around 10-15%. Into this bucket we can put all of the alt-right sympathizers and Trumpist hardliners, the neo-Nazi types and people who think Black Lives Matter is a terrorist group, and the barely literate partisans who mainline Alex Jones-Limbaugh-Hannity-Barton-Beck-Palin-Bachmann. Clearly these are not the people on which we should be wasting our time. As such, what’s discussed here will not apply to those persons which partisanism and ignorance have rotted to the core.

(2) Another qualifier, one that I should have made more explicit in my previous post on this topic, is that collaborative engagement across party lines will, by function of one’s identity, be easier for some people and much more difficult for others. It’s one thing for cis white men to be willing to sit through and listen to abuse that isn’t actually aimed at them. It’s entirely another to expect minorities and marginalized communities to do the same when they are the rhetorical target. Attempts to educate, therefore, must always be accompanied by a recognition of the privilege that allows white men like me to do so in ways that put POC and other minority groups at risk.

Anyone engaging in politically charged debate, or calling for others to engage in such debate, should keep these prefatory remarks close at hand. Some percentage of our interactions will surely be destined for failure at the outset, and we should implicitly understand why less privileged groups may not be up to the task. By and large, I see bridging the communication gap as a project for the patient, for people who feel a sense of duty to stand up for the oppressed — white folks: this includes all of us — and for those generally at ease stepping into the trenches.
 

 
With those asterisks in mind, the first reason I want to put forward here is that echo chambers as ideologically homogeneous spaces become problematic when those inside them are unprepared for the arguments outside them. Part of what makes political discourse in this country so toxic is the lack of viewpoint diversity on the right. Far too many conservatives are stuck in a spin cycle of thinly veiled propaganda that preys on low information voters by telling them what they want to hear. And what they so often want to hear is how awful liberals are. Careful, fact-based analysis of the issues is fleeting or altogether absent, leaving them defenseless when confronted with informed debate. It’s why we can’t agree on basic issues like climate change and energy production.

There’s an asymmetry here in that this phenomenon isn’t mirrored on the left, at least not at the same scale; indeed, the American right is uniquely egregious when it comes to sharing fake news and falling for misinformation. For those on the left, mainstream media does a commendable job covering conservative commentary, despite some bad apples that traffic in distortion and mislead in other ways. All things considered, I suspect that most of us who follow politics closely have a good sense of what the right-wing media bubble is saying, especially those of us once oriented in that very bubble. But if we take the rather extreme step of cleansing conservatives from our social circles, we lose the opportunity to learn from our disagreement and clarify our differences.

We may possess the utmost confidence in our ability to dispatch the opposition’s arguments. Nevertheless, it can be worthwhile to perform our own ‘peer review’ and test our assumptions in the field. We may find less extreme versions of the click-worthy hot takes favored by social media, or updated arguments deployed in new contexts. Or we might not, but we can only come to this determination through dialogue. Engaging may indeed confirm our suspicions, or it might challenge our stereotypes and give us a clearer picture of the people we rail against on a daily basis.

That the right doesn’t reciprocate this is no excuse to follow their lead. Our ultimate goal, I take it, is better policy, especially for the excluded people whom the left champions. And that requires improving our political discourse, which in turn requires improving people’s rationality. But such fiercely ambitious aims will never come about by resorting to isolationism and pitting everyone not up to our ideological or intellectual standards as an enemy not worth our time and energy. Abandoning attempts to bridge the political divide chipping away at the fabric of American life will only drive us further apart, and make it harder to secure progressive policies.

Whatever ideological circles we run in, whether self-imposed or algorithmically imposed, it can be advantageous to step outside of our regularly scheduled programming and keep an ‘ear to the ground’ so to speak for when the arguments change — and they do change as the Overton window shifts — so that when those arguments arise organically, we are able to rebut them effectively. Again, what matters here isn’t intellectual lucre and personal edification but finding ways to urge social change.

A second, related reason to avoid scissoring out all news and perspectives from across the aisle is that it removes the possibility of discovering common ground where it was seemingly absent before. In recent years, for example, we’ve seen some incremental acquiescence on the part of climate contrarians, who once denied the planet was warming but who now tend to plant their flag beside the question of anthropogenic influence. (This is actually a recurring pattern in the history of science that’s been “fun” to observe in the arena of climate change, but I digress.) We can still prune away the dismissives — the roughly 10% of the population uninterested in meaningful dialogue — while working with people who have demonstrated a responsiveness to evidence, who are interested in genuine conversations, but who are nevertheless saddled with doubt.

If that estimate of malicious actors and bad-faith partisans is accurate, that leaves a lot of room for people who are susceptible to our arguments. A problem with only engaging those on ‘our side’ is that we risk missing out on connecting with people who are open to a change in conviction. There are countless people in this country who don’t follow politics and new developments in science closely if at all. That doesn’t mean they’re not curious about the facts. And if we condition ourselves to write off anyone who doesn’t pass our purity test, we miss out on reaching these individuals, many of whom make it to the polls.

In Sam Harris’ recent podcast with ex-white supremacist Christian Picciolini, Picciolini says that though the folks he speaks with diverge ideologically in many important respects, both sides of the table tend to agree that we want prosperous and healthy lives for ourselves and our families. This can serve as a useful starting point from which to build. We may not get climate deniers to concede that humans are reshaping the earth’s climate, but we can point out that the poorest countries around the world are the most vulnerable to a rapidly warming climate and that we shouldn’t wish the developing consequences on anyone. Empathy and compassion aren’t ‘liberal’ ideals but shared traits to which we can appeal when facts fail.

Interacting with nonsense for extended periods of time can no doubt take its toll, but permanently siloing ourselves in uniform spaces won’t be the best way forward if we actually want to drive positive change in our society. By cutting ourselves off from the opposition permanently, we’ll never know whether our assumptions are off base, whether the arguments have changed, whether our disagreements can be resolved or whether there is room for common ground that can shift policy in a better direction for all of us.

On the other hand, neither is an open door policy where we let absurd and offensive ideas circulate unchallenged. A healthy balance should be struck between querying the database, understanding the perspective of those we vehemently disagree with, disengaging where appropriate, and defending the values we cherish when they are put to the test.

Further reading:

• Dialogue is Hard. This Blueprint May Help.
• Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe on common values

 
 
Part of the tension that arises in dialogue between conservatives and liberals is the sense that the latter is comprised of arrogant ‘know-it-alls’. And there is some truth to this. But another obstacle lies with a felt insecurity on the part of conservatives who lack the intellectual bandwidth to engage the relevant arguments. This self-doubt often manifests variously in the form of ad hominem, red herrings, and simply changing the subject. When both of these dynamics collide, nothing is learned or gained, and the exchange leaves each side further entrenched in their respective tribal tunnels.

As someone who grew up surrounded by fundamentalist conservative Christians, it’s an experience I came to know all too well. Explaining in detailed fashion why Obama isn’t coming for our guns or pushing back against the meme that America is a Christian nation rarely led anywhere. The arguments I was using fell outside of their wheelhouse, so rather than engage them, their bias would be projected onto me, aspersions would be cast on my character, the same dogmas already addressed would be reinforced with renewed vigor, and I’d somehow end up listening to a rehearsed tract on the importance of salvation. More ordinarily, the conversation would simply be shut down to foreclose any cognitive dissonance from taking hold.

In archetypal cases like this, there’s not much we can do to tip the scales toward meaningful dialogue. But in situations where the person is willing to hear you out, there is something to be said for using tailored communication to drive consensus. There are many ways to go about this — and just as many ways it can fall apart — but there are some general methods I’ve found fairly successful that I’d like to cover here. I’ll be pulling from advice shared by friends on social media, renowned pioneers of systematic communication, and my own experience with having difficult conversations.

Communicating with Purpose

The opening act can be the most challenging: you want to begin by listening and asking questions. Especially when the topic is one we feel passionate about, there’s a tendency to come out of the gate swinging. While that may feel satisfying in the moment, it’s a poor method if the goal is to win others over to your side. Instead, let them flesh out their argument to the extent they are able, even if you’re familiar with their position and the kinds of arguments they espouse.

This is important for three reasons. First, you want to make them feel heard, not dismissed. If they feel dismissed, they are more likely to dismiss what you have to say in turn. Second, letting them speak first allows you to listen for points of agreement you can later recall before homing in on the more contentious areas. And third, asking follow up questions may cause them to rethink their position on the spot. Indeed, a poignant question can do some of the work in advance, especially if it leads them to append qualifiers to their argument (e.g., perhaps they believe the earth is warming but are unsure of the cause, or find abortion acceptable in cases where the life of the mother is at risk).

When it is your turn, start by summarizing what you have just heard as charitably as you can. This is the first of what has become known as “Rapoport’s Rules,” a schema named after social psychologist and game theorist Anatol Rapaport and laid out by Dan Dennett in his book Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking. Dennett writes: “You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, ‘Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.'” A more than rudimentary grasp of both sides of the argument is required to pull this off, but by demonstrating that you have given their perspective a fair hearing, they are more likely to return the favor.

At this point it’s a good idea to recall those areas where your positions sync up before proceeding to your counterarguments. They’ll be less likely to tune you out if they sense this will be a collaborative exercise. In most cases, there are at least some premises or assumptions both parties will consider valid. Where climate change is concerned, rarely will you find someone who is flat-out against renewable or other sustainable forms of energy. You may butt heads over the best way to get there — whether by government involvement or free market solutions — but generally all sides concede that we should be safeguarding our environment, depolluting our water and air, and moving toward cleaner and less finite power sources, regardless of whether global warming is a scientifically secure phenomenon.

It’s now time to lay out your own position. There are some do‘s and don’ts here as well. Don’t frame the conversation in terms of left vs. right, liberal-conservative, fundamentalist-progressive. Doing so will only serve to trigger ingroup-outgroup thinking and reinforce their ideological commitments. Steer clear of buzzwords and pejoratives that feature prominently in culture-war rhetoric. Characterizing an argument as ‘alarmist’ or ‘denialist’ or referring to social programs as products of the ‘welfare’ or ‘nanny state’ is likely to backfire, as is relying on stereotypes of “what or how conservatives/liberals think.” If every disagreement is processed through the lens of one’s social identity, the opportunity to evaluate the arguments on their own merits is lost.

A preferred alternative is to appeal to shared human experience, common goals and values, and the specific consequences of certain policy positions. Compel them to inhabit the mind of someone living below the poverty line, who may depend on food stamps to feed their family. Oblige them to assume the role of a minimum-wage earner who has recently been laid off, and who’s now in need of affordable healthcare to continue basic medical treatment. Tapping into a subjective experience helps unmoor us from identity politics and guide us toward more open-ended deliberation of questions that may not affect us directly.

Facts and statistics, while important, should be used to supplement a programmatic approach to consensus that accounts for the psychological and cultural basis of belief formation. Rather than simply regurgitate the facts, explain why those facts should matter to the listener.

For example, it’s true that burning fossil fuels adds heat-trapping gases to the earth’s atmosphere, thereby warming the planet. But what does this entail on a human level? You might point out that relaxing regulations on coal-fired power plants could cause hundreds of thousands of pollution-related deaths annually from respiratory diseases, as occurs in India and China. Similarly, continued melting of the earth’s supply of continental ice sheets as a result of climate change endangers those living less than a few meters above sea level. Arguments become much more powerful — and bipartisan — when outcomes can be shown to affect you directly.

One other common roadblock I’ll mention here is what psychologists call the “curse of knowledge.” This comes into play when one person mistakenly assumes a certain level of background knowledge on the part of another. We may know the ins and outs of climate science or economic theory, but it won’t do us much good if our jargon-filled critiques fly right over the head of our listener. By the same token, words and concepts whose meaning is obvious to us may conjure different associations and inferences in the mind of someone else, which can lead to both parties talking past one another until the disconnect is resolved.

We can compensate for these asymmetries by taking our listener’s realm of knowledge into account and calibrating our language accordingly. Before expatiating on the carbon cycle, consider how someone not in possession of the relevant knowledge will see things, and what words they will understand. Instead of using ‘positive feedback’ to describe how the melting of sea ice causes more sunlight — and therefore heat — to be absorbed by the oceans, we might use ‘vicious cycle’ or ‘self-perpetuating cycle’ to close the gap between the formal and colloquial usage. This can save us time in the long run. In practice, it can be difficult to pin down one’s command of a given subject, but we should strive for accessible diction wherever possible so as not to leave our listeners in the dark.

For all this, you might be wondering why it should be up to us to be the rational equivalent of Optimus Prime. The straightforward answer is because the other person may be ill-equipped to structure their communication in a constructive manner. Particularly if you know said person is of the closed-minded and willfully ignorant variety, I firmly submit the onus is on us to do the legwork in tailoring the dialogue toward a productive end.

A friend on Facebook summarized the foregoing thusly: “In other words, someone always has to put on the bigboy pants.”

And I think that’s exactly right. While it’s much easier to be abrasive and dismissive — acknowledging that there are cases in which it may be warranted — it can, on occasion, benefit both parties to at least attempt a civil dialogue. I recognize this isn’t something everyone will feel comfortable doing, especially those who might be personally affected by the rhetoric being passed around, and I respect the decision to disengage — or even rebuke — the person who has caused the offense. But I think as long as there are some of us out there willing to engage the ostensibly unengageable and who understand the perspective of those we vehemently disagree with, we might have a chance at constructive conversation and maybe-just-maybe turn dogmatism into genuine understanding that leaves room for a change in conviction.

I also recognize that dialogue isn’t a magical salve, and that some folks truly are a lost cause. Indeed, there are certain people on whom no amount of preparation, kindness, and good faith is liable to have any effect whatsoever. Those beholden to worldviews so inward-looking as to marginalize free inquiry tend to preclude open discussion. Meanwhile, there are others who deliberately skirt behavioral boundaries, maliciously abusing the norms of civil discussion. In these situations I think you have to give up entirely any expectations of verbal consensus and switch the focus to the silent but curious observers, who are open to a change of mind and susceptible to reason and evidence and rational argument. This explains in part why I continue to engage in an online context.

To be sure, I get frustrated at times like everyone else, and I’m still mostly a pessimist when it comes to navigating political waters with Trump’s base. I feel much the same toward the polarized state of American discourse more generally. This was me not more than a month ago:
 

 
The occasional headway I’ve made in engaging difficult people in hock to rigid belief systems hasn’t disabused me of that pessimism. But while there certainly are days when sparring over politics seems a mug’s game, I’m not interested in throwing in the towel just yet. My interest in achieving consensus and the personal well being of those on whom such consensus depends is too strong to be swamped by futility and despair.

Keep these techniques in mind the next time an ideological dispute arises, and practice them until they become second nature. Remember that snowing your interlocutor with facts, figures and vocabulary well above their weight class is all but guaranteed to end with them shutting down entirely, closing off any possibility of reaching that person. It doesn’t matter if you know the facts backwards and forwards. It doesn’t matter if you’re right, even obviously so. You have to meet them on their level if you hope to make common cause and plant seeds for later realignment.

In matters of discursive persuasion, knowing your audience is far more important than knowing your facts. It’s also much(!) easier said than done. Arming oneself with the pertinent data and parsing the arguments is a cakewalk by comparison. Getting acquainted with one’s perspective, understanding their thought processes, and hewing your language just so in order to break through anti-intellectual heat shields and shut down tribalist impulses amounts to a daunting task that will routinely end in failure. But it’s something worth striving for, because finally making that connection is a rewarding experience — for you and for them.

Further reading: 

• How to Criticize with Kindness: Philosopher Daniel Dennett on the Four Steps to Arguing Intelligently
• To beat President Trump, you have to learn to think like his supporters
• Consider your Audience to Improve Communication
• The Science of Why People Reject Science
• The Problem With Self-Imposed Echo Chambers
• Jürgen Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action: Vol. 1; Vol. 2
• Podcast #108: Defending the Experts-A Conversation with Tom Nichols

Feature image credit: Marc Serota / Getty

 
 
In his 1748 treatise An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume famously wrote, “A wise man…proportions his belief to the evidence.” This sentiment has become a familiar fixture of our modern lexicon, a basic standard for intellectual honesty and a prescription for belief formation in an ideal world.

Of course it was also Hume who in an earlier volume wrote that reason is “the slave of the passions.” The original context of the passage concerns moral action and the precedence of our goals, motives and desires in relation to reason; specifically, Hume considered reason an ex post facto force in thrall to our moral impulses. But this concept can be duly extended to the psychology of belief formation more generally. Indeed, once we factor in culture, ideology, human psychology, and emotionally laden values, the image of the dispassionate creature responsive to the best evidence and argument gets cut down to size.

The ease with which the reasoning self can be subverted should clue us in that there is more going on behind the scenes than cold-blooded evaluation of facts. The prevalence of the triumph of emotion and ideology over reason and evidence is a feature of human psychology we should all be mindful of, but its underlying causes should be of special interest to proponents of science and other veterans of fact-based intervention.

In particular, what we know about cognition has great import for the information deficit model, the quixotic but woefully under-supported idea that the more factual information one is exposed to, the more likely one is to change their mind. As it turns out, our neural wiring tends to lead us in the opposite direction: our emotional attachment to our beliefs and values prods us to double down and organize contradictory information in a way that is consistent with whatever beliefs we already hold — the so-called “backfire effect.” As Chris Mooney put it in 2011: “In other words, when we think we’re reasoning, we may instead be rationalizing.”

I think that on some level anyone who has dealt with science denial for an extended period of time knows this intuitively. Adopting the role of serial debunker, whether online or off, can be a thankless and unrewarding undertaking. We figure that one more “hockey stick” graph, one more image of the vanishing Arctic, one more year of record-topping warmth, one more report on ocean acidification or extreme weather will settle the matter. But it rarely does; discredited claims persist, and frustration sets in.

That these efforts so often end in failure demonstrates the sheer poverty of “Just the facts, ma’am” approaches to persuasion. Summarizing a study on this very topic, Marty Kaplan writes: “It turns out that in the public realm, a lack of information isn’t the real problem. The hurdle is how our minds work, no matter how smart we think we are.” While access to more and higher quality information sounds like a fundamental feature of consensus building, it ultimately matters less than how we situate that information within our preexisting social matrix.
 

 
This is not to say that fighting denial with facts never works, or that people are incapable of changing their minds on anything of consequence — it can and we are. For instance, someone who is already well trained in logic and critical thinking and evidence-based evaluation of claims in other contexts may yield to the facts in a different context even when their beliefs are misaligned. This does, however, appear to be the exception rather than the rule. For the most part, the rationality we so aspire to all too often succumbs to inherent constraints and limitations in our cognitive makeup.

What’s become increasingly clear is that scientific literacy alone can’t solve the problem. Indeed, the reason clashes with creationists and climate deniers have us banging our collective heads against the wall is not because we don’t have the facts on our side. It’s because we’re bumping up against deeply entrenched cultural norms and attitudes. Gaining traction in disputes over settled science, it seems, is less about closing the information gap than about translation of the science such that the recipient can process the information without feeling like their social identity and worldview are at risk. Science denial thus stems from the felt sense that scientific beliefs are incompatible with the received wisdom of one’s social sphere.

The research supporting this view is now extensive. One of the pioneers at the forefront of the connection between beliefs, evidence and culture — what we might call ‘value-based belief formation’ — is a psychology professor at Yale by the name of Dan Kahan. The theory he and his colleagues have proposed as a more robust alternative to the deficit model is identity-protective cognition, otherwise known as cultural cognition.

According to Kahan and others, we perceive and interpret scientific facts largely as symbols for cultural affinities. Especially certain scientific facts — think  climate change, evolution, GMOs, stem cell research, vaccination — by dint of being politicized, carry cultural meaning that has nothing to do with the validity of the underlying science. Depending on the strength of one’s political biases, facts may never enter the analysis at all, except to be argued against and swept aside in order to reinforce a fixed ideological position. The more invested we are in a certain cultural identity, and the more politicized the scientific issue, the higher the frequency at which these impulses operate.

Associating with beliefs that are out of step with one’s social group, moreover, bears societal and interpersonal risks (e.g., loss of trust from peers) to members for whom ideology or ‘party’ has become a deep and meaningful part of their self-concept. This consequently prompts the identity-protective mechanism: we selectively credit and discredit evidence in response to those risks. In short, objective evidence is merely subjective fuel for the ideologically beholden. The psychology of group affiliation and competition for social status frequently override rational assessment of scientific knowledge when it comes to climate change, evolution, vaccine safety, and so forth.

TLDR – It’s about cultural identity and values, not facts. Echoing Hume, we are not ruled by reason.

I see Kahan & Co.’s research as a powerful commentary on the state of hyper-polarization of American politics and culture, and a cogent, if ineluctably depressing, counter-narrative to the information deficit model practiced by so many science communicators today. This leaves us on somewhat insecure footing. We cannot allow misinformation to spread unchallenged, but neither can we continue to labor under the faulty expectation that dousing our debates with more facts and figures will fan the flames of denial. To the extent this body of research provides an accurate picture of the referent under study, we would do well to absorb its insights and apply them in the arena of partisan politics and antiscience contrarianism.

As Chris Mooney wrote in 2012: “A more scientific understanding of persuasion, then, should not be seen as threatening. It’s actually an opportunity to do better — to be more effective and politically successful.” Charging forward with false notions of human psychology dooms our efforts before they get off the ground. That our ideological commitments often prod us to double down and organize dissonant information in ways that cohere with the expectations of our cultural group — and, indeed, that the more informed and literate we are the more susceptible we are to this phenomenon — is invaluable intel in countering the war against facts.

What does this look like in practice? The strategy urged by Kahan and his colleagues is to lead with values, appeal to common concepts and desires, and emphasize shared goals. Scientific minutia is no one’s friend in these conversations. Instead of a rote rehearsal of the facts, explain why those facts should matter to the listener. Especially avoid framing issues in terms of left vs. right or science vs. denialism. In essence, steer the discussion away from ideological pressure points that are likely to trigger ingroup-outgroup dynamics.

By no means is this an easy or surefire path to success. For one, it requires much more preparation in terms of tailoring your arguments to your audience. But the evidence suggests this approach is more productive than throwing fact after fact at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Some have taken cultural cognition theory to imply that facts are culturally determined — to support a kind of postmodernist understanding of truth. This couldn’t be more mistaken. Identity-protective cognition is an explanatory model for how beliefs — particularly those existing at the intersection of science and politics — are formed. It is both descriptive and prescriptive: it contends that our cultural experiences and personal identity influence the way we approach and interpret facts, and points us toward new modes of engagement. It should not be construed as a recommendation for how we are to form reliably accurate views about the world, abandoning fact-based decision making, or embracing a post-truth era. Scientific facts are still culturally independent descriptions of nature, and the physical laws of the universe don’t change depending on who’s measuring them.

Rather, this research, like all good psychology, brings to light imperfect manifestations of our innate cognitive circuitry. The more we learn about cognition, the more fleeting rationality and reasoned thinking appear to be, and the more vigilant we must be to avoid the common pitfalls so ingrained in our neurochemistry. After all, the penchant for tribalism and partisanism are more akin to features than bugs in the human operating system; such shortcomings have been with us from the beginning. Only by recognizing these features and adopting communication strategies that account for them can we hope to effectively engage lasting resistance to established science and help guide society out of the pre-Enlightenment era to which we seem to be regressing.
 

 
Assembled below are a collection of studies and articles on cultural cognition:

The Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School

Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus (mirrored here; pdf). Kahan et al. 2010:

 
 
The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change. Kahan et al. 2011:

 
 
The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks. Kahan et al. 2012:

 
 
Striving for a Climate Change:

 
 
Fixing the communications failure. Kahan 2010:

 
 
Most Depressing Brain Finding Ever (study by Kahan et al. 2013 here): 

 
 
Letting Animals Vote:

 
 
The Meaning of Scientific “Truth” in the Presidential Election. Kahan 2016:

 
 
The Hyper-Polarization of America:

 
 
The Science of Truthiness: Why Conservatives Deny Global Warming:

 
 
The ugly delusions of the educated conservative:

 
 
The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science:

This post was featured on HuffPost’s Contributor platform.

Feature image via The Guardian; photo credit: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images

 
 
Barry Schwartz’s “The Paradox of Choice” remains one of the greatest talks in the TED catalog. Incisive and comprehensively applicable, the way he connects choice psychology to marketing, human welfare and social policy is masterful.

The basic idea is as follows: Humans value choices. And it has often been assumed that too little choice is inhibiting. Thus every year, we have more choices than we did the year before. This has psychological implications which affect every one of us. Due to the escalation of expectations, too much choice is unfavorable, if not equally so compared with too little choice, which suggests there is clearly some optimal amount of choice.

Have we struck this balance, or are we bogged down daily with a deluge of unnecessary options which belabor decision-making? Is there such a balance? What might it look like?

This ideas presented here have far-ranging implications for everything from department store models, online shopping and general consumerism to academia and video games.
 

“If you shatter the fish bowl so that everything is possible, you don’t have freedom; you have paralysis and decreased satisfaction. Everybody needs a fishbowl. The absence of a fishbowl is a recipe for misery and disaster.”

External link: Barry Schwartz: The Paradox of Choice

Feature image: “Stripes of Gold” by colindub.com

 
 
It can be frustrating when we fail at getting our point across to other people. One common source of communication breakdown is failing to account for our listener’s realm of knowledge. Psychologists refer to this as the “curse of knowledge,” and it describes how successful communication is compromised by the presence and absence of knowledge.

It goes something like this: once we have knowledge of something, we can’t imagine what it’s like to not know it. We then naturally tend to assume the listener is in possession of the very same knowledge. And this can lead to dead-end communication when that assumption turns out to be wrong. Those of you who frequently discuss complex or divisive issues such as politics, religion or technology have surely encountered this situation. You may have all the relevant information or the most sound argument imaginable, but if you communicate those thoughts in language unintelligible to those you’re speaking to, your message may collapse. In her piece, Overcoming the Curse of Knowledge, Jesse Galef elaborates:
 

She also points out that calibrating your language to the capacity of your audience is very different from “dumbing down” your message. The idea is not to oversimplify but to adapt your speech in a way that maintains the original intent and underlying substance of your message.

Some of us are better at this than others, of course. The ability to communicate effectively is a skill that’s continually sharpened throughout life. By carefully evaluating our own realm of knowledge and being conscious of the fact that others may derive different word-meaning connections and semantic inferences, we can more successfully convey information. After all, it can often be pointless to make yourself appear smart if no one understands what you’re saying. It’s far more in your favor to always be mindful of your audience and tailor your language appropriately.

External Link: Overcoming The Curse of Knowledge

Feature image via webdesignerdepot.com