Why We're Wrong

Today I want to follow up on the climate change post, and explore why some people refuse to acknowledge that climate change is occurring despite overwhelming scientific evidence that it is.

In my last post I argued that the climate change debate needs to move from the “is it happening” question to the “what exactly should we do about it” question. I blamed right-wing special interests for trying to undermine the belief in the relationship between climate change and human activity. But as effective as these special interests may be, their efforts can’t fully explain why so many people deny that climate change is happening. So, why do people continue to believe such nonsense and other nonsensical nonsense?

Our Righteous Minds

In his 2012 book, The Righteous Mind, author Jonathan Haidt explains that our intuition is much more influential than our ability to reason, and that our reasoning ability often plays the role of justifying a deeper intuitive feeling that we already have. In Haidt’s words, reason is intuition’s “lawyer”, or “press secretary”. Today, this concept is fairly well-known and accepted in academic literature on moral psychology (Danny Kahneman lays out a similar framework, System 1 and System 2, in Thinking Fast and Slow).

This is critical in helping us understand why people are loath to change their minds on “hot”, data-heavy political issues such as climate change, gun control, taxes and healthcare. People’s views on all of these issues have less to do with the available empirical evidence, and more to do with deep-seated moral frameworks and values that they are born with and develop as they grow up. It's not just about the facts.

In the book, Haidt describes an experiment conducted by Professor Drew Westen. Professor Westen measured the brain activity of highly partisan subjects. He provided the subjects with seemingly contradictory statements said by John Kerry (to the Democrats) and George W. Bush (to the Republicans) that portrayed the two politicians as hypocrites. This caused discomfort among the subjects of the experiment. Westen then gave the subjects a third statement about each candidates that appeared to help resolve the contradiction, and saw how the reward centers of the subjects’ brains were quickly activated. As Westen wrote:

“Once partisans had found a way to reason to false conclusions, not only did neural circuits involved in negative emotions turn off, but circuits involved in positive emotions turned on. The partisan brain didn’t seem satisfied in just feeling better. It worked overtime to feel good, activating reward circuits that give partisans a jolt of positive reinforcement for their biased “reasoning.” These reward circuits overlap substantially with those activated when drug addicts get their “fix,” giving new meaning to the term political junkie.”

Other studies have shown that when people are given additional information about both sides of a political issue, their existing opinions about the issue tend to be reinforced and they become even more convinced of their views. More evidence actually makes us more partisan and more sure of ourselves, even if the evidence cuts both ways. This is due to a combination of what's called confirmation bias and desirability bias: we search for information that will confirm what we already think, and information that we think will make us look better in the eyes of other people. Our internal "lawyer", reason, is constantly searching for evidence to help its client, "intuition", win the case. This helps explain why the endless amount of information that is now available to us through the internet ends up causing us to be more polarized, not less.

Former FBI Director James Comey’s Senate testimony two weeks ago is a great example of the dominance of intuition and the psychological biases at work: it seems that everyone who saw the testimony had their preexisting views about President Trump, Comey and Russia entirely affirmed. Judging from the reaction to the testimony in the media and on social networks, nobody changed their mind on any of these issues.

In other words, we’re hard-wired to reject information that undercuts what we believe, because information that is in harmony with what we already believe makes us feel good on a biological level. We seek out information that justifies our existing views. We even get a hit of dopamine when we’re shown information that is in harmony with what we believe, so we have a tendency to minimize or even ignore contrary information. But let's not lose hope--I think it is in fact possible to overcome what seems like our biological nature, and work with reason to influence intuition. The lawyer can influence the client, it's just more difficult than the other way around. So it's no wonder that despite clear scientific consensus that climate change is caused, at least in part, by human activity, some people are and will probably remain unconvinced by the evidence.

We Can Overcome

So what can we do to overcome our intuitions and biases, and make sure our views are supported by the best empirical evidence possible? This goes back to what I’ve been saying in a number of posts now: we must expose ourselves to opposing viewpoints and a diverse group of people with different opinions. We must be cognizant of how our minds work. Put ourselves in the shoes of others. Be open to the possibility that we may be wrong about certain things. Tear down our echo chamber.