Cultural Cognition - Cultural Cognition Thesis

Cultural Cognition Thesis

A study, by Dan M. Kahan and his colleagues, collected data on the climate-change risk perceptions of large representative samples of US adults. The study measured assessments of two opposing viewpoints of public opinion on climate change. Science Comprehension thesis (SCT) argues that because the public does not presumably know the information scientists do about climate change, they do not take it as seriously. Cultural cognition thesis (CCT) argues that people tend to form opinions of risk based on their social and cultural group they identify with. CCT model findings: People, who subscribe to a hierarchical, individualistic world-view that ties authority to social rankings and avoids interference with the decisions of such authority, tend to be skeptical of environmental risks. They perceive that widespread acceptance of climate change risks would lead to restrictions on commerce and industry. These are things hierarchical individualists value. In contrast, people who hold an egalitarian, communitarian world-view, which favors looser social organization and attending to collective needs over individualistic ones, usually are suspicious of commerce and industry. As a result, they find those industries worthy of restriction. The research data shows that egalitarian communitarians are more concerned than hierarchical individualists with climate change risks.

Scholars have furnished two types of evidence to support the cultural cognition hypothesis. The first consists of general survey data that suggest that individuals’ values more strongly predict their risk perceptions than do other characteristics such as race, gender, economic status, and political orientations.

The second type of evidence consists in experiments that identify discrete psychological processes that connect individuals’ values to their beliefs about risk and related facts. Such experiments suggest, for example, that individuals selectively credit or dismiss information in a manner that reinforces beliefs congenial to their values. They also show that individuals tend to be more persuaded by policy experts perceived to hold values similar to their own rather than by ones perceived to hold values different from them. Such processes, the experiments suggest, often result in divisive forms of cultural conflict over facts, but can also be managed in fashions that reduce such disagreement.