Kind: captions
Language: en
there is this research paper that has
been on my mind for years it shows that
there is a particular type of problem
where the smarter you are the more
likely you are to get it wrong so I
asked my American friend Wy to go out on
the street and ask people the questions
from the study to see if we could
replicate its
findings the first question in the paper
is about a fictitious study on skin
cream so in this madeup study people
with skin rashes are assigned to eat did
the experimental group where they use a
new cream for 2 weeks or the control
group where they use no cream for that
same period and at the end they count up
how many rashes improved and how many
got worse in each treatment group the
results are summarized in this table so
the question study participants were
asked was did the skin cream make the
rash better or did it make it worse the
question is a little tricky because it
requires proportional reasoning I think
better better so what what are you
looking at just real quick I'm I'll be
honest I'm just looking at how big the
numbers are if you just look for the
biggest number well that is the group
who used the skin cream and the rash
improved so this number is bigger than
this number yeah yeah so you might
conclude that the cream worked it makes
rashes better that is the intuitive
answer but if you look more carefully at
the data and use proportional reasoning
you realize that in the experimental
cream group about three times as many
people got better as got worse but in
the control group around five times as
many people got better than worse so
using no cream your rash was
significantly more likely to improve in
fact it's a fair conclusion to say that
the cream on average made rashes
worse the lead author on this study was
Dan Kahan I'm studying the science of
science communication he and colleag
recruited a nationally diverse sample of
1,111 Americans to participate but
before answering the question on skin
cream each participant was asked a
series of questions to assess their
numeracy a numeracy it's not so much the
capacity to use complicated mathematics
but really to reason well about
quantitative information numeracy scores
for the entire sample were roughly
normally distributed now if you group
together all the participants with a
certain numeracy score say group all the
zeros together all the ones together all
the twos and so on well what fraction of
each group do you think got the skin
cream question right well the results
are exactly what you'd expect oh this is
math it's math in a fifth of people
which is a smaller number uhhuh the the
rash wors so the skin cream didn't help
so it didn't make it better I feel the
cre if anything made it worse the higher
the numeracy score the greater the
fraction of of participants who CAU the
answer right yeah I don't think the
numbers mean anything to me because I
think I need I think I would need to
know what's the rash and what's the
cream you're giving me those with better
numeracy skills managed to avoid the
intuitively correct answer what are the
like proportions had nobody get into the
numbers like this this is great
excellent you got that right okay and
correctly determine that the cream
actually made rashes worse which is no
big surprise but this version of the
skin cream question was only shown to
some of the participants another subset
saw the same exact table except the
column headings were reversed so in this
case the skin cream did make the rashes
better so how did the different numeracy
groups do with this version well again
the highest numeracy groups were the
most likely to get the correct answer
but below a numeracy score of five the
results were pretty flat that could be
because even without any numerical
reasoning most people might expect a
skin cream to improve a rash which just
happens to be the right answer in this
case but the true purpose of the study
was not to find out how numeracy affects
our ability to reason accurately with
data no it was to figure out if
something else affects our reasoning
ability specifically
politics if you look at the skin cream
data again but separate the participants
by their self-reported political
affiliations so liberal Democrats versus
conservative Republicans there's
basically no difference between the
groups all follow the same pattern
irrespective of party which makes sense
because a study on skin cream is about
as apolitical as it
gets but what the researchers did with
the other half of the participants was
the opposite instead of skin cream they
presented a fictitious study on gun
control in case you don't know Democrats
generally believe that gun control
reduces crime whereas Republicans
believe it increases crime because it
takes guns out of the hands of good guys
who could prevent or deter crime so in
their madeup study cities were divided
into two groups those that had recently
enacted legislation making it illegal to
carry a concealed handgun and similar
cities that had no such legislation over
the following year crime rates were
monitored to see where crime increased
and where it decreased the results are
summarized in the
table again no surprise it's exactly the
same as the skin cream example of course
there were two variations one where gun
control decreased crime and one where it
increased crime now if you look at the
results by political leaning they paint
a very different picture it it's kind of
obvious if you have guns in the city
people are going to start shooting
people and you know if you don't have
guns and you outlaw them cities are
obviously going to have less crime in
them but the thing is is like you can't
just take people's guns away and say
that they're illegal you know like
that's just it's kind of like drugs so
wait these numbers though how did you
just come to that conclusion when
Republicans are shown the table where
the correct answer is gun control laws
increase crime then the accuracy
improves with increasing numeracy just
as before but for the Republicans who
are shown the table where gun control
decreases crime well numeracy skills no
longer affect accuracy those with a
numeracy score of seven or eight are
barely more likely to answer correctly
than those with a score of 0 or 1 so
where the crime improved like there can
be crimes that were prevented because
the guns were legal and the crimes that
were worsened that could have been other
crimes like not related to G Guns you
know and the same is true in Reverse for
Democrats the more numerate people in
this sample I have no problem
recognizing the correct answer when it
shows that gun control reduced crime but
if the data showed that gun control
increased crime then all of a sudden
numeracy didn't
help remember this is the exact same
data in question as the skin cream
example the only difference is now that
data is presented in a political context
and the biggest difference in
performance is among the most numerate
people they're scoring a lot worse than
they should have the low numeracy people
are about 25 percentage points less
likely to get the right answer if that
answer is threatening to their ideology
than if it's consistent with their
ideology the people are high in numeracy
on the other hand 45 percentage points
less likely to get the right answer
rather than using their mathematical
ability to come to the correct
conclusion they somehow selectively
apply it to justify the conclusion they
already believed beforehand illegal guns
last ilal crime yeah I mean I wouldn't
thought that that as numeracy increases
people are more divided about the
efficacy or the risks of gun control
regulation the same thing with fracking
and same thing with global warming we
see the polarization conditional on
numeracy but we also see the same effect
when we measure people's reasoning
Proficiency in other ways the people are
high in science literacy more polarized
in the people who are low the people who
are high and actively open-minded
thinking you see more polarization not
less as they become more proficient in
this kind of thinking based on this data
of course I'd want to look into it and
look at all the sources and of course
there are sources from sources because
people are always citing each other this
is the numbers are actually not real
whatsoever it looks but if if I were to
look at this pragmatically I would just
say that the the playing field seems
pretty even here pretty even yeah okay
great now everyone wants to believe that
they are rational that they could change
their beliefs in light of the evidence
if you encountered evidence on a
political issue that you were like this
is this is good evidence I've done my
research but it contradicted your
political belief on that issue how would
you react to that
I considered myself to be a little bit
open-minded in that aspect at least be
open to learning yeah if it's on paper
and that's the way it is I would have to
go with that I'm going have to deal with
it I can't be like well I feel like it's
different all I see here are people who
will continue to hold partisan beliefs
regardless of the evidence all the while
deluding themselves into thinking they
came to these beliefs via an independent
sober consideration of the
facts the truth is that most ly we
believe what we believe to fit in with
our tribe and that in the most important
way is highly
rational because humans are very social
creatures and for most of our Evolution
we've depended on each other for
survival being ostracized from the group
is almost as bad as walking off a cliff
if we question the status quo by
rejecting what those around us accept is
true we jeopardize our place in society
man I've learned that people are not as
dissimilar as we think that there
is so many similarities between sides
that we think share nothing in common I
attended Zoom meetings in the opposite
um
party and it was kind of scary because
they sounded just like my side it makes
you think about what we could get
done if we didn't have that
burden and I think it would be a pretty
different world and pretty
extraordinary if we managed to figure
that
out so what do we do about this well I
don't think there is an easy solution
but Kahan has identified a few angles
that might work one is avoiding partisan
rhetoric rather than talk about gun
control or climate change avoid the
loaded terms and instead focus on
specific local policies no buzzwords
that could trigger anyone into tribal
things thinking no villainizing the
other side just constructive solutions
that make sense given the data one
example comes from Southeast Florida
where a bipartisan group of lawmakers
have joined together to take action on
sea level rise the plans don't debate
whether climate change is man-made or
not they just deal with existing
challenges faced by residents the other
thing is to foster a curious mindset
maybe the science curious people they're
more willing to examine all the evidence
including
that's inconsistent with their political
ideology with increasing science
comprehension usually comes increasing
polarization on political topics but
with increasing science curiosity this
same increasing polarization is not
observed that is a
start I am not going to claim to have
the solution problems of this sort are
likely as old as the human species
itself they are just much more obvious
now that everyone can post Tweet comment
and basically shout loudly into this
nearly infinite digital space the only
thing I hope to do is bring some
awareness the beliefs of most people are
not formed by a careful consideration of
the data that includes me and it
probably includes you acknowledging this
is an important first
step one organization that is trying to
tackle polarization and our information
Echo Chambers is ground news so we
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show you any political leaning they have
that way you can read about the same
issue from different perspectives with
the context needed to separate facts
from politics for instance the FBI
recently released statistics about
violent crime in the US this is a key
political issue that was referenced in
the presidential debate most
left-leaning Outlets focused on the 3%
drop in violent crime some used this to
counter Trump's claim that crime is on
the rise however right-leaning sources
suggested crime increased under Harris
and Biden in line with Trump's
statements so how can we have such a
disagreement well ground news lets us
dive deeper into the reporting to
uncover that right leaning sources
referenced a completely different report
a doj survey and this survey collected
data differently and crucially couldn't
include fatal crimes while the FBI
statistics did similarly the FBI
statistics couldn't include unreported
crimes while the doj survey specifically
does so we're comparing apples and
oranges here which is the source of the
disagreement this kind of critical
thinking is crucial to keeping our
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