A new study alludes to a notion that the partisan political divide in America is inspired more by emotion and allegiance than fact.
The study, authored by Yale University’s Dan Kahan, gives credence to the argument that when it comes to politics, the truth really doesn’t matter. Titled “Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government,” the intent was to monitor whether subjects were swayed when a political persuasion was attached to a scenario.
“In our experiment, we presented subjects with a difficult problem that turned on their ability to draw valid causal inferences from empirical data,” the summary states, which goes on to indicate that those who proved they had the mental capacity to “make use of quantitative information” did so when presented with results related to a study regarding skin-rash treatment.
When politics entered the picture, that wasn’t the case.
The same subjects, when asked to assess a study relating to a gun-control ban, did not follow the same line of independent, logical thought.
“This outcome supported ICT (Identity-protective Cognition Thesis), 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,” the study states.
Relating this conclusion to the current political climate isn’t difficult. Partisan divides over the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans in Congress are trying to repeal — for the 41st time — indicates one line of thought. While modeled after Republican Gov. Mitt Romney’s healthcare plan in Massachusetts, the plan quickly became attacked by the Republican side when presented by Democratic President Barack Obama.
Regarding that same issue of the Affordable Care Act, Democrats who opposed Romney’s plan found themselves rushing to the support of the president.
The potential U.S. war on Syria is another example of partisan bickering, largely based on little information. When Obama presented the notion that the U.S. would strike Syria, without presenting evidence to justify his claim that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons on its own people, he immediately met opposition from the Republicans, a party otherwise with a propensity to utilize defense spending for military action.
Climate change is another politically charged debate, with Republicans consistently attempting to contradict scientific data alluding to the reality of global warming.
“The reason that citizens remain divided over risks in the face of compelling and widely accessible scientific evidence, this account suggests, is not that they are insufficiently rational,” the report states. “It is that they are too rational in extraction from information on these issues the evidence that matters most for them in their everyday lives.”