Who is seeing the world as it is?
I fear I sparked this recent discussion of the relative epistemic virtues of educated elites v. common people by asking, at the end of my last post, "But is there any reason to think that us regular folks have a lot of
intellectual discipline and integrity? Enough to avoid the effects of
confirmation bias and the rest? Does anyone?"
But the contrast I was talking about was not 'common folks' vs. the educated. It was "high-level politicians" vs. everybody else. The article I was discussing, by Jonathan Chait, had alleged that integrity and intellectual discipline were in short supply among high level politicians, and that this accounted for their ability to change their policy views to benefit their political ambitions without noticing that that's what they were doing. Now, it seemed to me that there was a danger that we would see this claim as something that applied only to politicians (who are, after all, widely held to be slippery people without much integrity) and not seriously consider that the rest of us (i.e., non-politicians) may also be prone to adjusting our beliefs to suit our political allegiances. So that was the question I wanted to raise. It had nothing to do with commoners vs. elites, smart vs. dumb, or educated intellectuals vs. ignorant masses, or anything of the kind.
In fact there is some reason to think that education can make things worse. (Sorry!) In a fascinating paper called "It Feels Like We're Thinking: the Rationalizing Voter and Electoral Democracy,"(PDF) by Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels of Princeton University, some data is presented about how people's perceptions of the state of the economy are influenced by their political allegiances. Roughly, people tend to see economic growth and the budget deficit as worse than they really are when their political opponents are in charge of the government, and as better than they really are when their side is in charge. For example, a survey from 1996 found that more than half of Republicans thought that the budget deficit had gotten worse during President Clinton's first term, when, in fact, it had declined by more than 90%. Republicans were twice as likely as Democrats to say that the economy had gotten worse. (By most measures it had improved.) (In other papers, Bartels reports similar results in relation to Democrats perceptions of the economy during Reagan's second term.)
OK. Nothing too surprising so far. But Bartels and Achen also looked at the effect of different levels of political information on these partisan biases. As you might expect, the accuracy of people's perceptions of the budget deficit and the economy tended to increase as their overall level of political information went up. (Level of political information was measured in a fairly standard way by asking respondents to identify various prominent political figures, say which party was in control of Congress, and the like). But there was a drop off in the ability to see the improvement in the economy among the best-informed Republicans. And for both Republicans and Democrats, partisan identification seemed to have it's most pronounced effect on the best informed respondents. Bartels and Achen also cite some research by Danielle Shani, which finds a similar effect. Shani writes, "political knowledge does not correct for partisan bias in perception of ‘objective’conditions, nor does it mitigate the bias. Instead, and unfortunately, it enhances the bias; party identification colors the perceptions of the most politically informed citizens far more than the relatively less informed citizens”
(Shani's paper, "Knowing Your Colors: Can Knowledge Correct for Partisan Bias in Political Perceptions?" is available here.)
Of course, political information is not the same thing as education, but I'd bet there's a strong correlation. And here's a report of another study that looked specifically at college education as a variable. A Pew Center poll about global warming found (not too surprisingly) that Democrats are more likely to believe that global warming is happening and is caused by human activity than Republicans are. But the differences are much greater among the college educated. Among those who have not graduated from college 52% of Democrats and 31% of Republicans have that view. But among college graduates the percentage for Democrats goes up to 75, while the percentage for Republicans goes down to 19. Whatever your own views about global warming, I think you have to wonder, why would the more educated people be farther apart on this issue than the less educated people? It is, after all, a scientific and not a political or ideological issue. Whatever science really is telling us about this, you would hope that more educated people would be better able to comprehend and evaluate that science. Could it be that more education simply increases your ability to rationalize and defend your prejudices?
But the contrast I was talking about was not 'common folks' vs. the educated. It was "high-level politicians" vs. everybody else. The article I was discussing, by Jonathan Chait, had alleged that integrity and intellectual discipline were in short supply among high level politicians, and that this accounted for their ability to change their policy views to benefit their political ambitions without noticing that that's what they were doing. Now, it seemed to me that there was a danger that we would see this claim as something that applied only to politicians (who are, after all, widely held to be slippery people without much integrity) and not seriously consider that the rest of us (i.e., non-politicians) may also be prone to adjusting our beliefs to suit our political allegiances. So that was the question I wanted to raise. It had nothing to do with commoners vs. elites, smart vs. dumb, or educated intellectuals vs. ignorant masses, or anything of the kind.
In fact there is some reason to think that education can make things worse. (Sorry!) In a fascinating paper called "It Feels Like We're Thinking: the Rationalizing Voter and Electoral Democracy,"(PDF) by Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels of Princeton University, some data is presented about how people's perceptions of the state of the economy are influenced by their political allegiances. Roughly, people tend to see economic growth and the budget deficit as worse than they really are when their political opponents are in charge of the government, and as better than they really are when their side is in charge. For example, a survey from 1996 found that more than half of Republicans thought that the budget deficit had gotten worse during President Clinton's first term, when, in fact, it had declined by more than 90%. Republicans were twice as likely as Democrats to say that the economy had gotten worse. (By most measures it had improved.) (In other papers, Bartels reports similar results in relation to Democrats perceptions of the economy during Reagan's second term.)
OK. Nothing too surprising so far. But Bartels and Achen also looked at the effect of different levels of political information on these partisan biases. As you might expect, the accuracy of people's perceptions of the budget deficit and the economy tended to increase as their overall level of political information went up. (Level of political information was measured in a fairly standard way by asking respondents to identify various prominent political figures, say which party was in control of Congress, and the like). But there was a drop off in the ability to see the improvement in the economy among the best-informed Republicans. And for both Republicans and Democrats, partisan identification seemed to have it's most pronounced effect on the best informed respondents. Bartels and Achen also cite some research by Danielle Shani, which finds a similar effect. Shani writes, "political knowledge does not correct for partisan bias in perception of ‘objective’conditions, nor does it mitigate the bias. Instead, and unfortunately, it enhances the bias; party identification colors the perceptions of the most politically informed citizens far more than the relatively less informed citizens”
(Shani's paper, "Knowing Your Colors: Can Knowledge Correct for Partisan Bias in Political Perceptions?" is available here.)
Of course, political information is not the same thing as education, but I'd bet there's a strong correlation. And here's a report of another study that looked specifically at college education as a variable. A Pew Center poll about global warming found (not too surprisingly) that Democrats are more likely to believe that global warming is happening and is caused by human activity than Republicans are. But the differences are much greater among the college educated. Among those who have not graduated from college 52% of Democrats and 31% of Republicans have that view. But among college graduates the percentage for Democrats goes up to 75, while the percentage for Republicans goes down to 19. Whatever your own views about global warming, I think you have to wonder, why would the more educated people be farther apart on this issue than the less educated people? It is, after all, a scientific and not a political or ideological issue. Whatever science really is telling us about this, you would hope that more educated people would be better able to comprehend and evaluate that science. Could it be that more education simply increases your ability to rationalize and defend your prejudices?
Your title of this entry, "Who is seeing the world as it is?" strikes me. With understanding of the world so intertwined with everyone's different perspective, I wonder if there really is one way the world 'is.'
I find this fascinating. How does college education make Republicans less likely to understand climate change? I am reminded of the effort to teach Creationism as science. When the court ordered against it saying Creationism was not science, the people behind the movement who had created all the Creationist texts and curriculum devised a way to change Creationism into Intellient Design and came up with a large scale plan to get it into our public shcools. The whole thing took a lot of intelligence, planning and forethought. Clearly the notion of using their education to rationalize, defend and even promote their prejudices was at work here.
Not sure if education has any affect on this. Could it be that individuals who choose to go on to higher education have already found a means to rationalize/defend their beliefs. A study that takes a look at students prior to college and then after might provide a better sense of this.