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Public Apathy Over Climate Change Unrelated To Science Literacy: Study
NewsRoomAmerica.com - Public Apathy Over Climate Change Unrelated To Science Literacy: Study
subjectivity affects all people, and true objectivity is a difficult state for any to achieve in their considerations of any subject which they have taken the time and invested an effort in becoming informed about.
NewsRoomAmerica.com - Public Apathy Over Climate Change Unrelated To Science Literacy: Study
...The study, in the journal Nature Climate Change, suggests that as members of the public become more science literate and numerate, individuals belonging to opposing cultural groups become even more divided on the risks that climate change poses.
Funded by the National Science Foundation, the study was conducted by researchers associated with the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School and involved a nationally representative sample of 1500 U.S. adults.
"The aim of the study was to test two hypotheses," said Dan Kahan, Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law and Professor of Psychology at Yale Law School and a member of the study team. "The first attributes political controversy over climate change to the public's limited ability to comprehend science, and the second, to opposing sets of cultural values. The findings supported the second hypothesis and not the first," he said...
..."Cultural cognition" is the term used to describe the process by which individuals' group values shape their perceptions of societal risks. It refers to the unconscious tendency of people to fit evidence of risk to positions that predominate in groups to which they belong.
..."In effect," Kahan said, "ordinary members of the public credit or dismiss scientific information on disputed issues based on whether the information strengthens or weakens their ties to others who share their values. At least among ordinary members of the public, individuals with higher science comprehension are even better at fitting the evidence to their group commitments."
..."What this study shows is that people with high science and math comprehension can think their way to conclusions that are better for them as individuals but are not necessarily better for society."
..."More information can help solve the climate change conflict," Kahan said, "but that information has to do more than communicate the scientific evidence. It also has to create a climate of deliberations in which no group perceives that accepting any piece of evidence is akin to betrayal of their cultural group."
subjectivity affects all people, and true objectivity is a difficult state for any to achieve in their considerations of any subject which they have taken the time and invested an effort in becoming informed about.