Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government
| dc.contributor.author | Kahan, Dan | |
| dc.contributor.author | Peters, Ellen | |
| dc.contributor.author | Dawson, Erica Cantrell | |
| dc.contributor.author | Slovic, Paul | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2017-01-28T00:47:07Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2017-01-28T00:47:07Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2013 | |
| dc.description | 22 pages | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | Why does public conflict over societal risks persist in the face of compelling and widely accessible scientific evidence? We conducted an experiment to probe two alternative answers: the “Science Comprehension Thesis” (SCT), which identifies defects in the public’s knowledge and reasoning capacities as the source of such controversies; and the “Identity-protective Cognition Thesis” (ICT) which treats cultural conflict as disabling the faculties that members of the public use to make sense of decision-relevant science. In our experiment, we presented subjects with a difficult problem that turned on their ability to draw valid causal inferences from empirical data. As expected, subjects highest in Numeracy — a measure of the ability and disposition to make use of quantitative information — did substantially better than less numerate ones when the data were presented as results from a study of a new skin-rash treatment. Also as expected, subjects’ responses became politically polarized — and even less accurate — when the same data were presented as results from the study of a gun-control ban. But contrary to the prediction of SCT, such polarization did not abate among subjects highest in Numeracy; instead, it increased. This outcome supported ICT, which predicted that more Numerate subjects would use their quantitative-reasoning capacity selectively to conform their interpretation of the data to the result most consistent with their political outlooks. We discuss the theoretical and practical significance of these findings. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.citation | Kahan, D. M., Peters, E. Dawson, E. C., & Slovic, P. (2013). Motivated numeracy and enlightened self-government (Working Paper No. 16). The Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School. Retrieved from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2319992 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1794/22105 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | en_US |
| dc.publisher | Yale Law School | en_US |
| dc.rights | Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0-US | en_US |
| dc.subject | Numeracy | en_US |
| dc.subject | Risk | en_US |
| dc.subject | Public policy | en_US |
| dc.title | Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government | en_US |
| dc.type | Article | en_US |