Where do you stand on climate change? How about gun control? Are you for gay marriage or against? Wherever you stand, you probably base your positions on the facts. But something far deeper is shaping your view of those facts. Want to participate in a little quiz, to help you understand where your positions actually come from... to look in the mirror to see why you fall where you do on the culture war issues of the day? Take the Cultural Cognition quiz.
Now add up the answers to the odd-numbered questions, then add up the answers for the even-numbered questions. Write down the totals. I'll tell you what the results say in a bit, but first...
Same exercise for Question Set Two. Add up the odd-numbered answers, and the even-numbered ones. Write down the totals.
Now, here's what it all means, and how it relates to the questions about climate change etc. back at the beginning. Cultural Cognition research has found that the positions we take on many things have less to do with the facts we cite to support those positions, and much more to do with our subconscious general sense of how we'd like to see society organized and operate. This makes sense in the context of evolutionary psychology, since as social animals we depend on the tribe for our own health and well-being. So it increases our chances of survival to adopt positions that agree with the group/tribe, since that strengthens our tribe's dominance in society, and our tribe's acceptance of us as a member in good standing.
Cultural Cognition identifies our views about society and how it should operate, along two continua:
In Quiz One, if your answers to the odd-numbered questions were higher, you are more of an Individualist, which means you prefer a society that mostly leaves the individual alone. "The Tea Party", or "Libertarian"... those are just labels for people who support an individualist "society should mostly leave the individual alone" worldview. Individualists are more likely to be climate change skeptics because the solutions to climate change require the community to act together, and that would encourage a society/government seeking the greater common good by imposing its collective will, which is not how an Individualist prefers things.
If the sum of your answers to the even-numbered questions in Quiz One was higher, you're a Communitarian and you believe more in a "we're all in this together" society where the collective is more involved in determining how things go. Communitarians are more likely to believe in the threat of climate change, because solutions to climate change would enhance the kind of 'we're all in this together" society they prefer.
Quiz Two identifies us along the second continuum, on which we are either more Hierarchists or more Egalitarians. If the sum of your answers to the even-numbered questions in Quiz Two was higher, you're more of a Hierarchist. You prefer a society with fixed class and race and economic divisions, the status quo, and the old reliable way of doing things. You're big on predictability and stability. You are more likely to deny climate change because if it's real, fixing it will certainly mean a lot of change, which threatens your stable predictable comfortable status quo-world.
But if the sum of your answers to the odd-numbered questions in Quiz Two was higher you are more of an Egalitarian. You bristle at the restrictions of class and hierarchy that the status quo and the old fixed ways of doing things impose. You want a more flexible society, and are likely to believe in climate change because the solutions mean shaking things up and breaking free of the patterns that created the climate change mess to begin with.
(For both quizzes, the bigger the gap between the sums, the stronger you identify with that worldview and the more intensely you probably old your positions on the culture war issues. The closer together the two sums are, the more you fall in the middle, and the more flexible you probably are on many issues.)
Let's wrap this up with a final quiz.
How do you think Individualists feel about gun laws?
How about Communitarians?
Individualists are more likely to oppose gun controls. That's society/government butting in.
Communitarians support gun laws. To them, more government regulation is just fine.
How do Hierarchists feel about gay marriage?
How do Egalitarians feel about gay marriage?
You got it! Hierarchists are far more likely to oppose gay marriage and the destabilizing breakdown of the traditional definition of marriage. Egalitarians are more likely to support gay marriage. To them, flexibility is good.
We label ourselves Republicans or Democrats, Conservatives or Liberals, and we argue our selective view of the evidence, on climate change or guns or gay marriages or any of the divisive issues of the day, as though our truth is the only possible truth. But our minds are not informed by the evidence. They are closed by the deep drive to conform our views to those with whom we identify, in the name of the safety which tribal unity provides. In uncertain and threatening times, this Cultural Cognition only grows more fierce, and our arguments less civil, more violent. We'd do well to learn what Cultural Cognition teaches us, and use that knowledge to temper its influence on our own views, while summoning up some respect for the underlying Cultural Cognition influences contributing to the views of those with whom we disagree. That make encourage slightly more open minds, more respectful listening instead of polarized polemics, and more compromise, without which progress will be much harder to achieve.
There is much more on Cultural Cognition in Ch. 4 of "How Risky Is It, Really? Why Our Fears Don't Always Match the Facts".
Follow David Ropeik on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dropeik
Interesting interpolation of (your?) beliefs into a 'journalistic' piece.
Care to explain HOW equal marriage is "destabilizing"?
http://www.crichton-official.com/essay-stateoffear-whypoliticizedscienceisdangerous.html
Semper fi
I do agree with your interpretation of the 1st quiz. We have NO desire to hold people to any "station" in life, preferring that everyone succeed or fail based on their efforts. And that includes ourselves, of course!
Semper fi
What do you call a person who looks at data, facts and results and makes their life and political decisions based on what the data shows is scientific fact or produces the most positive result?
It has been irrefutably shown that a stable two-parent family consisting of a mother, father and their biological children is the environment which most often produces self-supporting, productive individuals who rely least on government support and contribute the most in taxes.
It has also been irrefutably shown that global warming is a fact.
We should hire people based on the same criteria as the world's finest orchestras. They put the instrumentalist behind a curtain and a committee, which has not seen the performer, listens to the music. The person whose performance is superior gets a seat in the section.
Ropeik is negating that small but growing portion of humanity who run their beliefs through a filter of common sense.
Look, I'm sure you believe you're being objective. We all do. It's because we think of objective decision making as rational and subjective as irrational. Of course the other side is the irrational one -- their beliefs are so OBVIOUSLY screwed up that it leads them to the wrong conclusions!
The point of the article is that there's no such thing as objectivity, but that lack of objectivity isn't necessarily a bad thing. For example, what you call "common sense" is a set of ideas and beliefs about how the world works. Of course, those are beliefs and ideas which you personally find acceptable -- you had to in order to adopt them. You and I may diasgree about what constitutes "common sense," vehemently disagreeing what the rules of common sense are. It's subjective. See?
And yet, and yet we 'allow' non-reproductive betterosexual couples to marry. And yet, we 'allow' single people to adopt. And yet, other studies show that children (if there ARE any within the marriage) do equally well - if not BETTER - with two parents of the same gender, particularly lesbians. (This may well be because every child in a same-gender marriage is a WANTED child.)
Sorry, your 'premise' is far from "irrefutable".
Jesus was none of the above. He was a Compassionate Realist..
Jesus used a miracle to feed people with fish and bread and didn't make any comments on how they ought to be feeding themselves.
I would like to make an additional point, in regards to the headline (I suspect you probably don't get a say as to what that reads).
"Where You Stand on the Culture War Issues, and Why!"
What people believe, and what they "stand" for, are not necessarily the same things, especially when there is money involved. I have personally found that most "heart held beliefs" have a financial motive (either perceived or real) somewhere along the line.
I find it incredulous that we consider ourselves the most intelligent life form that has ever existed, yet most of our decisions are made by money, a contrived convenience with no intelligence of its own.
It's not that difficult and then you would be able to put the results in a database.
Sorry to challenge your limitations, but it is REALLY not that hard to do.
Test 2=== Odd-19 Even-42 I agree
Pretty Cool
David
pro gun but i dont think we need 50 round handgun clips but i own an assault rifle
gay marriage...i dont care but would prefer it called smarriage or something to eliminate confusion
men and women should be equal but i dont see where the govt can make that happen, it comes from within individuals to do so.
legal immigration is fine with me....porous border isnt healthy.
school prayer for sporting events is good...but not in the morning in class....we used to pray that no one was hurt. a moment of silence in cities where there is a more diverse religious group would be fine...(hence why local laws make more sense)
taxes....flat tax would produce the most revenue to the treasury....17-20% or so
healthcare......make it where it costs less....not where it costs more and under 88k is subsidized....
out of control spending...ridiculous....cut it now, quit printing money
global warming..really? we are going to look at 200 years in a multi million year old planet with known climate shifts(ice age).but i agree with green energy and conservation.....the govt should offer tax breaks for the cost of wind farms and any other energy sources by making them 100% deductible the first year...
Or more precisely, conservatives are often portrayed in news and entertainment as wanting a good life only for people like them. Remember, the media in general is a money making device. Headlines and images are selected to illicit an emotional response in order to get you to pay attention. Consider these two hypothetical headlines:
1) "NUCLEAR POWER PLANT SHUTS DOWN"
2) "Local nuclear plant begins scheduled refueling and maintenance operations"
Which one are you most likely to stop and read?
Or this headline (this one is real) and first sentence of the article
"Government investigators smuggled radioactive materials into U.S."
Two teams of government investigators using fake documents were able to enter the United States with enough radioactive sources to make two dirty bombs, according to a federal report made available Monday
I'm very familiar with this GAO investigation. They had two tiny (micro curie) sealed sources in their car and had a set of forged NRC paperwork. The sources were so small that anyone could safely hold them in their hand. Technically the sources could be taped to a firecracker and exploded (a "Dirty Bomb") but on the practical side a terrorist could disperse more radioactive material blowing up a bag full of kitty litter.