Climate science literacy, critical reasoning, and independent thinking ... - Cultural Cognition of Health

My paper “Climate Science Communication and the Measurement Problem ” features a “climate science literacy” (CSL) test.

I’ve posted bits & pieces of the paper & described some of the data it contains.  But I really haven’t discussed in the blog what I regard as most important thing about the CSL results.

This has to do with the relationship between the CSL scores, critical reasoning, and independent or non-conformist thinking .  I’ll say something—I doubt the last thing—about that now!

1. The point of the exercise: disentangling knowledge from identity. I’ll start with the basic point of the CSL—or really the basic point of the study that featured it and the Measurement Problem paper .

Obviously (to whom? the 14 billion regular readers of this blog!), I am not persuaded that conflict over culturally disputed risks in general and climate change in particular originates in public misunderstandings of the science or the weight of scientific opinion on those issues.

That gets things completely backwards, in fact: It is precisely because there is cultural conflict that there is so much public confusion about what the best available evidence is on the small ( it is small ) class of issues that display this weird, pathological profile.

Given the stake they have in protecting their status in these groups, people can be expected to attend to evidence—including evidence about the “weight of scientific opinion” (“scientific consensus”)—in a manner that reliably connects their beliefs to the position that prevails in their identity-defining groups.

But there are two ways (at least) to understand the effect of this sort of identity-protective reasoning.  In one, the motivated assimilation of information to the positions that predominate in their affinity groups generates widespread confusion over what “position” is supported by the best available scientific evidence.

Call this the “unitary conception” of the science communication problem .

Under the alternative “dualist conception,” “positions” on societal risk issues become bifurcated.  They are known to be both badges of group membership and matters open to scientific investigation.

Applying their reason, individuals will form accurate comprehensions of both positions.

Which they will act on or express, however, depends on what sort of “knowledge transaction” they are in.  If individuals are in a transaction where their success depends on forming and acting on the position that accurately expresses who they are , then that “position” is the one that will govern the manner in which they process and use information.

If, in contrast, they are in a “knowledge transaction” where their success depends on forming and acting on the positions that are supported by the best available evidence, then that is the “position” that will orient their reasoning.

For most people, most of the time, getting the “identity-expressive position” right will matter most. Whereas people have a tremendous stake in their standing in cultural affinity groups, their personal behavior has no meaningful impact on the danger that climate change or other societal risks pose to them or others they care about.

But still, every one of them does have an entirely separate understanding of the “best-available-evidence” position.  We don’t see that—we see only cultural polarization on an issue like climate change—because politics confronts them with “identity-expressive” knowledge transactions only.

So too do valid methods of public opinion study (observational and experimental) geared to modeling the dynamics of cultural conflict over climate science.

Politics and valid studies both assess citizens’ climate-science knowledge with questions that measure who they are, whose side they are on .

But if we could form a reliable and valid measure that disentangles what people know from who they are , we would then see that these are entirely different things, entirely independent objects of their reasoning.

Or so says the “dualist” view of the science communication probolem.

The aim of the “climate science literacy” or CSL measure that I constructed was to see if it was possible to achieve exactly this kind of disentanglement of knowledge and identity on climate change.