This is the book I read before Hero of Ages but forgot to post about. Had to largely force myself to read this because although the subject is interesting to me, I know/follow so little American politics that it's a slough.
Also one quotation to share:
Kahan doesn't find it strange that we react to threatening information by mobilizing our intellectual artillery to destroy it. He thinks it's strange that we would expect rational people to do anything else. "Nothing any ordinary member of the public personally believes about the existence, causes, or likely consequences of global warming will affect the risk that climate change poses to her, or to anyone or anything she cares about," Kahan writes. “However, if she forms the wrong position on climate change relative to the one held by people with whom she has a close affinity-and on whose high regard and support she depends on in myriad ways in her daily life-she could suffer extremely unpleasant consequences, from shunning to the loss of employment. The reality, he concludes,
is that "the cost to her of making a mistake on the science is zero," but "the cost of being out of synch with her peers potentially catastrophic, making it "individually rational" to put group dynamics first when thinking about issues like climate change.24
Kahan calls this theory "identity-protective cognition": "As a way of avoiding dissonance and estrangement from valued groups, individuals subconsciously resist factual "What we believe about the facts," he writes, "tells us who we are." And the most important psychological imperative most of us have in a given day is protecting our idea of who we are and our relationships with the people we trust and love.
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