The resistance of conservative Christians to basic science and scientific facts is well documented by this point. So the question becomes: how do you get conservative Christians to accept reality? How do you get them to accept the conclusions of science instead of wallowing in self-centered denial? Merely presenting the scientific evidence isn't enough, but having a different sort of expert present the evidence appears to help a lot.
Peter Aldhous writes that people can be separated into two scales: individualists vs. communitarians, based on how they balance individual rights against community needs, and hierarchists vs. egalitarians, depending how they view social stratification. Liberals tend to be egalitarian-communitarian; conservatives tend to be hierarchal-individualist. This difference has a big impact on how people evaluate evidence.
[Dan Kahan of the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale University] investigated attitudes for and against giving the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine to schoolgirls to prevent cervical cancer - another divisive issue. After he presented people with both sides of the argument, he found that 70 per cent of egalitarian-communitarians thought it was safe, compared with 56 per cent of hierarchical-individualists.
When the "pro" argument was presented as coming from an expert painted as being in the egalitarian-communitarian camp, and the "anti" view came from a hierarchical-individualist, the split widened to 71 versus 47 per cent. But strikingly, swapping the experts around caused a big shift: 61 per cent of hierarchical-individualists then rated the vaccine as safe, compared to 58 per cent of egalitarian-communitarians. In short, evidence from someone you identify with sways your view.
In practice, it is hard to find experts who will give "unexpected" testimony. But when the evidence was presented by experts with a variety of backgrounds, views were not so starkly polarised, with 65 per cent of egalitarian-communitarians and 54 per cent of hierarchical-individualists agreeing that the vaccine is safe.
Source: New Scientist
On one level it's not surprising to learn that people are more likely to trust the testimony of others whom they consider more like themselves. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that people are at least a little bit more likely to trust experts of the same race, ethnicity, or gender. Still, it's unfortunate that scientific evidence can't speak for itself. It suggests that regardless of what the science says, people will trust people saying things that they are already predisposed to believe.
It's worth noting that this is a problem that affects everyone, not just conservatives. Still, it's probably a more serious issue when dealing with conservatives because there seems to be far more conservatives who are in denial about some aspect of science than there are liberals who are in denial. If one tactic to get them to see reason is to simply put up there an expert that looks and sounds like them, why not do it?
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