These are the basic points that I recall making at the recent New Perspectives on Science & Religion conference in Manchester, England. Slides here.
1. What CSR can learn from SSC. The Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) uses dual process theory to understand religious convictions. Religious beliefs, according do CSR, reflect “natural” reasoning, which is rapid, intuitive, and affect-laden. Scientific beliefs, in contrast, reflect “unnatural” reasoning, which is conscious, deliberate, and analytical (Seybold 2017). Because “natural” reasoning is easier than “unnatural,” we should expect to see pervasive conflicts between religious convictions and scientific insights, such as human evolution.
CSR’s natural-unnatural framework is (as many CRS scholars recognize) a conception of the distinction between “System 1” and “System 2” information processing featured in cognitive science generally (Stanovich & West 2000). The Science of Science Communication (SSC) has developed concepts and methods that help identify how these forms of reasoning figure in public conflicts over science (Kahan 2015b). Incorporating these concepts and methods into CSR can enhance its power to explain public rejection of scientific insights that transgress religious convictions.
Two mechanisms are particularly relevant. One is expressive rationality, which refers to the use of reasoning to form identity-congruent rather than truth-congruent beliefs. The other is motivated system 2 reasoning (MS2R), which investigates the role that System 2 information processing plays in factual beliefs that signify one’s identity (Kahan 2016, 2017b).
Both of these mechanisms figure in beliefs about human evolution. CRS scholars have attributed religious disbelief of human evolution to overreliance on System 1 heuristic-reasoning (e.g., Gervais 2015). But in fact, much like ideological skepticism about climate change, religiously grounded resistance to evidence of human evolution increases as the capacity and disposition to use conscious, effortful System 2 reasoning increases (Kahan 2017a; cf Kahan & Stanovich 2016).
This is what SSC tells us to expect to see insofar as positions on human evolution symbolize competing cultural styles. It is an example of how incorporating expressive rationality and MS2R into CSR would enhance CSR’s power to explain the distinctive effects of religion on information processing.
2. What SSC can learn from CSR. The relationship between SSC and CSR, however, is not a one-way street. Just as SSC is in a position to enrich CSR, so CSR is in a position to advance the agenda of SSC.
The primary contribution CSR can contribute to SSC, I believe, consists of myriad distinctive real-world examples of information-processing strategies that variously resist and accommodate the tension between truth-seeking and identity-expressive goals.
An example is the phenomenon of cognitive dualism. As illustrated by Hameed’s “Pakistani Dr.” paradox, this dynamic refers to the harboring of opposing role-specific factual perceptions (Everhart & Hameed).
“I believe in it [human evolution] at work, but disbelieve in it at home,” says the Dr.
No academic, the Dr. nevertheless has a more nuanced and sophisticated view of “beliefs” than do many decision scientists. He appropriately recognizes “beliefs” not as registers of assent or non-assent to abstract propositions but rather as action-enabling, affective states, the rationality and consistency of which must be judged relative to the goals of the actor.
Because beliefs so understood necessarily exist within clusters of action-enabling intentional states (emotions, moral judgments, desires, etc.), it is a mistake to apply to them a criterion of identity that conceives of them as free-standing states of assent or non-assent to general claims about how the world works. Rather, they can be judged for their rationality and consistency only in relation to the actions they enable: if those actions are suited to the Dr.’s goals and are consistent with one another, then there is no psychological contradiction in the cognitive dualistic stance the Dr. adopts toward them.
I am convinced that the Pakistani Dr. has numerous counterparts in the field of risk perception. These include U.S. farmers who (like the Dr.) disbelieve in climate change in order to be members of a cultural community but who believe in it in order to be successful farmers.
The Dr.’s counterparts also include citizens in SE Florida who, despite being polarized on the reality of human-caused climate change, are of one mind about the collective mission to preserve their way of life from the dangers that human-caused climate changes poses to it.
We will not understand these complex and consequential phenomena without an account of cognitive dualism. And the likely most profitable place to look for such accounts is in CSR.
3. Normative/prescriptive upshot. Finally, the points of contact between CSR and SSC can help inform moral and prescriptive assessments.
Hameed’s work (2013, 2015) suggests that cognitive dualism on evolution is socially contingent. It can flourish in a natural—indeed, unremarkable—fashion in societies in which competing positions on evolution have not become entangled with social identity. But where such entanglement has occurred (often as a result of the strategic behavior or conflict entrepreneurs), cognitive dualism is less viable; in that situation, individuals will perceive that they are being put to a choice between knowing what science knows and being the kind of person whose identity is defined by holding a particular position on the fact in question (e.g., human evolution).
They are highly likely in that situation to pick the identity-defining position and forgo engagement with the position that is supported by scientific evidence (Kahan 2015b).
This is a highly undesirable outcome. It is productive of needless group conflict; and it obliterates the division between the private domain, in which free and reasoning individuals should be allowed to form their own conception of the good life, and the public domain, in which they are legitimately obliged to be guided by the best scientific evidence when inhabiting a role (e.g., a medical Dr.) that can be successfully occupied only with the benefit of such insight.
At least one objective of SSC should be to identify practices and norms that preempt this conflation. Because it is rich with conflicts of this sort, CSR can help SSC to sharpen and refine this function (Kahan 2015b)
References
Everhart, D. & Hameed, S. Muslims and evolution: a study of Pakistani physicians in the United States. Evo Edu Outreach 6, 1-8 (2013).
Gervais, W.M. Override the controversy: Analytic thinking predicts endorsement of evolution. Cognition 142, 312-321 (2015).
Hameed, S. Making sense of Islamic creationism in Europe. Public Understanding of Science 24, 388-399 (2015).
Kahan, D.M. ‘Ordinary science intelligence’: a science-comprehension measure for study of risk and science communication, with notes on evolution and climate change. J Risk Res 20, 995-1016 (2017a).
Kahan, D.M. Climate-Science Communication and the Measurement Problem. Advances in Political Psychology 36, 1-43 (2015a).
Kahan, D.M. The expressive rationality of inaccurate perceptions. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 40 (2017b).
Kahan, D.M. The Politically Motivated Reasoning Paradigm, Part 2: Unanswered Questions. in Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2016).
Kahan, D.M. What is the "science of science communication"? J. Sci. Comm, 14, 1-12 (2015b).
Kahan D.M. & Stanovich K.. Rationality and Belief in Evolution, CCP/APPC Working paper (2017).
Seybold, K.S. Questions in the Psychology of Religion (Cascade Books, 2017).
Stanovich, K.E. & West, R.F. Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23, 645-665 (2000).
