As promised, we are now going to look a little bit deeper into the possible reasons that people feel so strongly, one way or another, about GMOs. To do this, we will be discussing an article called How Politics Makes Us Stupid. Although the article doesn't talk specifically about GMOs, it does use another controversial issue, climate change, as an example throughout the article, and in terms of public opinion, the two issues seem to parallel each other.
One of the most typical explanations (usually used by the scientific community) for why people are anti-GMO is because they simply do not understand the information being provided enough to thoroughly judge the debate. As much as I hate to admit it, I used to think this exact same thing, and it made me angry why people couldn't just see and understand scientific evidence pointing towards the fact that nothing has been shown to suggest GMOs are harmful to human health. I then realized that there was so much more to why people believed the way they do; it's not just a black and white issue, and the purpose of my blog is to explain why this is the truth and possibly derive a solution to the madness.
The article calls this idea, the one that says the public doesn't understand the information enough in order to make an informed opinion on an issue, the Science Comprehension Thesis. It is similar to the concept that Yale Law Professor Dale Kahan and his team describe as the More Information Hypothesis, which says that a better educated public wouldn't have the all the problems dealing with accepting scientific evidence. However, Kahan doesn't believe that these theories actually explain what is going on. His thinking is that "Perhaps there are some kinds of debates where people don't want to find the right answer so much as they want to win the argument. Perhaps humans reason for purposes other than finding the truth--- purposes like increasing their standing in their community, or ensuring they don't piss off the leaders of their tribe." He then added that if this was true, a better-educated public wouldn't end the disagreements; it would only give the different sides the ability to better argue for their own point of view.
To test this, Kahan surveyed 1,000 Americans on their political views and then gave them the following problem to test their math skills:
The participants of the study were asked to conclude whether the rash of those who used the skin cream got better than those who didn't use the skin cream or if the rash of those who used the skin cream got worse than those who didn't. When first looking at the numbers, it appears that the cream did in fact help to alleviate the rash, and this is what most of the surveyed public reported. But in reality, after calculating percentages, 25% of the people's rashes who used the skin cream got worse while only 16% of those people's rashes who didn't use the cream got worse; only those reporting strong math skills got this right. The fact that the majority of people surveyed came to the wrong conclusion due to the lack of working out the problem supports the Science Comprehension Theory.
However, Kahan also made a problem very similar to the skin cream one, but about a proposal to ban people from carrying concealed handguns in public. The results were very different. There was no longer a correlation between strong math skills and getting the answer right. Conservatives were able to correctly solve the problem when it pointed in their favor, but when they received the version of the problem where the answer pointed in the other viewpoint's direction, they failed. The same thing was observed in liberals. In fact, people of either party who reported as having strong math skills were 45 percentage points more likely to get the answer right when it matched what they believed in. The article concluded that "the smarter the person is, the dumber politics can make them" and "people weren't reasoning to get the right answer; they were reasoning to get the answer they wanted to be right".
So what does this exactly mean in terms of the GMO debate, or any controversial issue for that matter? It seems to be that the way our society thinks about scientific or political issues is US vs. THEM, with no in-between. And the big gap that fills the void is what is stopping any progress in moving forward or getting to the bottom of the issue from happening. In terms of GMOs for example, those pro-GMO and those anti-GMO are so caught up in being what they are that they fail to step back and really looking at the implications of their, for a lack of better word, stubbornness. Some of these implications involve the inability for the technology to be further tested and developed to ensure its safety as well as, perhaps most importantly, the inability to utilize GMOs as a tool against the fight for world hunger.
We then again question why people have such a hard time abandoning their predisposed thoughts. Kahan explains this behavior as Identity-Protective Cognition, or "As a way of avoiding dissonance and estrangement from valued groups, individuals subconsciously resist factual information that threatens their defining values." This completely makes sense if you think about it. For example, if I went home to the farm where we eat beef upwards of 5 times a week and told my dad I wanted to be a vegetarian, I would probably be shunned and ridiculed until I changed my ways. So in reality, I would never consider becoming a vegetarian or even looking into the benefits of being a one because the conflict I would cause at home wouldn't be worth it. Instead, I have a fairly narrow minded view on the subject just because that was the attitude I have been subjected to all along. (For clarification, I have absolutely no problems with those who choose to be vegetarians, and I commend them for being able to do something that I could not.) But the same narrow-mindedness that I experienced in this scenario happens all the time to both pro-GMO and anti-GMO supporters.
These opinions are only strengthened because this leads to people seeking out information to validate that they are right rather than looking at information spanning the entire breadth of the topic. And often, as we saw in the test by Kahan earlier, this leads to people seeing things and making conclusions that aren't actually there. The article points out that it is fine and almost unnoticeable when individuals act this way, but it is when groups act this way when it becomes a problem. Personally, I think that people are too afraid to actually look at the evidence being presented to them for fear that it might prove their opinions wrong one way or another, so instead they resort to ignoring most of the credible evidence. I also think that this particular issue could be solved with a better science-communication standard but that is an entire post in itself.
To wrap things up, I want to touch on some ways that we can avoid setting ourselves up for this tunnel vision attitude towards scientific issues. Although Kahan himself said its almost impossible to completely avoid bias, he recommends that people try and find a group of people who you can basically agree to disagree with. He says, "I try to find people who I actually think are like me--- people I'd like to hang out with--- but they don't believe the things that everyone else like me believes. If I find some people I identify with, I don't find them as threatening when they disagree with me." I agree with this tactic, but I still think that it could eventually lead to a lack of communication on these disagreed upon issues, again because you will not want to disappoint your friends. The solution I propose is for everyone truly push themselves outside their current ideologies. Make it a point to read information that goes against current beliefs, and don't take everything you see for face value because chances are there is more to it. I understand that this will probably take years and even decades to turn an entire population's attitude from being blinded by the human necessity of needing to fit in, to the attitude that everyone fits in no matter what they believe. Then and only then will we actually be able to solve some of the world's most daunting problems.
References
Klein, Ezra. "How Politics Makes Us Stupid." Vox. Vox Media, 06 Apr. 2016. 16 Apr. 2016
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