The Invisible Foreigner

Senator Jim Inhofe mocks Al Gore

In early February, record-breaking snowfalls paralyzed the US East Coast. As cities stopped functioning, a strange thing happened: the climate change culture wars erupted. Republican Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma made fun of climate change messenger Al Gore (the igloo picture is “Al Gore’s New Home”), writing that the snow proved that global warming science was wrong. His tribe of American global warming skeptics cheered. The scientific community reminded us that global warming is a long term effect not observable season by season, restating that this weird and wild weather was exactly what climate change would create as temperature rises changed historical weather patterns, and their tribe of  global warming supporters cheered.

How can the same facts be used to justify completely opposing conclusions? Why does scientific information get disputed and politicized so badly? Why, in a country so proud of scientific fact and rationality do we have have heated disputes about the truth of evolution, the existence of global climate change, the necessity of Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccinations, and the child-welfare effects of gay and lesbian parenting? Our polarized public debate has created national paralysis on these and many other issues.

As a young cell biology and genetics undergrad student, I thought the problem was about science education. I was certain that scientific truth was obvious to anyone who took the time to listen to or read about it. I was convinced that rational discussion of scientific findings would convince the entire world about the rightness of science. But after I graduated, I found out I was fundamentally wrong about human nature.

It turns out that we humans are driven to do strange things by our unconscious minds. We’re not the rational individualists we like to think we are. Instead, we’re emotional social animals who need to be liked, driven by our need to form kinships with the people we whose values we share and admire. So we filter the information we hear to reinforce our personal beliefs in ways that make us liked by those we admire. In other words, we feel kinship to a team, then listen to information and unconsciously filter it so the information confirms our belonging that that team. This is called “cultural cognition”, referring to the tendency of individuals to listen for what they want to believe in so it confirms their personal cultural identities. We believe in whatever helps us belong.

Who is uncovering this uncomfortable fact about us? It’s scientists again, a multidisciplinary group of social scientists, psychologists, anthropologists, political scientists and others leveraging the ideas of complex adaptive systems to explore how individual persons interact with each other to cause group behavior and beliefs that emerge in unexpected ways. Their study of cultural cognition describes the influence of group values on risk perceptions and related beliefs. The article by Dan Kahan below studies the cultural values of equality and authority versus individualism and community. Summarizing the cultural cognition mechanism behind the global warming debate:

• People are disconcerted to believe that behavior they aspire to is detrimental to society while behavior they dislike is beneficial. Because accepting evidence about this could drive a wedge between them and their peers, they have a strong emotional reason to reject it. Therefore, in the global warming debate:

• People with individualistic values who aspire to personal initiative, and people with hierarchical values who aspire to respect authority tend to dismiss evidence of global warming because it would lead to restrictions on commerce and industry, which they admire. These are the global warming skeptics represented by Republican Senator James Inhofe.

• People with egalitarian and communitarian values are suspicious of commerce and industry, which they see as causes of unjust disparity. They tend to believe evidence that such activities pose unacceptable risks and should be restricted, so tend to accept evidence of global warming.

As a democratic society where consensus drives political change, it’s important that we acknowledge how cultural cognition makes us form belief-based teams around many important social issues that America faces.  Climate change is just one of them. Other hotly contested issues include health care, risk perceptions around nanotechnology, the use of deadly force in police work, risks of synthetic biology, risk perceptions around gun control, and risk perceptions around the death penalty. I believe that the risk of political paralysis is especially high for America because our two-party political system tends to divide us into two polarized teams: conservative versus liberal. Multiparty countries have more teams to belong to, creating a larger diversity of opinions and possibly causing less paralysis. Think about it. America is one of the very few places where the existence of climate change and evolution are debated.

Is cultural cognition driving us to political paralysis?

References:

• Dan Kahan’s Nature Magazine article on how scientists can communicate complex ideas better if they acknowledge cultural cognition.

• Another Nature Magazine editorial, specifically on cultural cognition and the climate change debate.

• A cool Yale Law School project studying cultural cognition and its effect on public policy beliefs.

• The Plexus Institute, my favorite group on complex adaptive systems, also known as complexity science and systems science. This post is inspired by one of their e-mails.

• Wikipedia article on cultural cognition, showing the breadth and pervasiveness of the phenomenon.