NPR: Belief In Climate Change Hinges On Worldview

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124008307

Belief In Climate Change Hinges On Worldview

by Christopher Joyce
February 23, 2010

...

Individualists And Communitarians

To social scientist and lawyer Don Braman, it's not surprising that two people can disagree so strongly over science. Braman is on the faculty at George Washington University and part of The http://www.culturalcognition.net/">Cultural Cognition Project, a group of scholars who study how cultural values shape public perceptions and policy beliefs.

"People tend to conform their factual beliefs to ones that are consistent with their cultural outlook, their world view," Braman says.

...

Participants in these experiments are asked to describe their cultural beliefs. Some embrace new technology, authority and free enterprise. They are labeled the "individualistic" group. Others are suspicious of authority or of commerce and industry. Braman calls them "communitarians."

...

"It doesn't matter whether you show them negative or positive information, they reject the information that is contrary to what they would like to believe, and they glom onto the positive information," Braman says.

...

(Audio and transcript available at the link.)