Summary and Analysis: “Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government”
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Kahan, Dan M., Ellen Peters, Erica Dawson, and Paul Slovic. 2013. “Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government.” SSRN Electronic Journal, January. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2319992.
This 2017 paper by Dan Kahan and colleagues from Yale, Ohio State, Cornell, and University of Oregon presents groundbreaking research on why political polarization over scientific evidence persists despite widespread access to compelling data.
Core Experiment and Findings
The researchers conducted an experiment with 1,111 US adults who were asked to interpret data from a fictional study. The same mathematical problem was presented in two contexts:
- A politically neutral one (skin rash treatment effectiveness)
- A politically charged one (gun control ban effectiveness)
Key Finding: When the topic was politically neutral, people with higher mathematical ability (numeracy) performed better at interpreting the data correctly. However, when the topic involved gun control, higher numeracy actually increased political polarization rather than reducing it.
Specifically:
- High-numeracy conservatives were 45% more likely to correctly identify results when the data showed gun bans increased crime
- High-numeracy liberals showed similar bias when data showed gun bans decreased crime
- Both groups performed poorly when correct answers challenged their political beliefs
Two Competing Theories
The paper tests two explanations for persistent disagreement over scientific facts:
1. Science Comprehension Thesis (SCT): Public conflicts stem from insufficient scientific literacy and reasoning abilities. Solution: Better education.
2. Identity-Protective Cognition Thesis (ICT): Conflicts arise because cultural/political identity concerns override objective assessment of evidence. People use their intelligence selectively to reach conclusions that affirm their group identity.
The results strongly support ICT over SCT.
Implications for Current Politics and MAGA
While the paper doesn’t explicitly discuss MAGA (using pre-2016 data), its findings are deeply relevant to understanding current political dynamics:
1. Intelligence as a Polarizing Force
The paper reveals that in politically charged contexts, higher cognitive ability becomes a tool for more sophisticated rationalization rather than better truth-seeking. This helps explain why political divisions often intensify rather than diminish among educated populations.
2. The Futility of “Just Educate Them” Approaches
The findings challenge the common assumption that political disagreements about facts (climate change, COVID-19, election integrity) can be resolved through better education or providing more information. The paper shows that more capable individuals are actually better at finding ways to reject threatening information.
3. Expressive Rationality
The paper introduces the concept of “expressive rationality” – it’s individually rational for people to process information in ways that maintain their standing within their identity groups, even when this leads to collectively harmful outcomes. For an individual:
- The personal cost of holding the “wrong” belief about climate change or gun control is negligible
- The social cost of disagreeing with one’s political tribe can be devastating
This dynamic helps explain the intensity of belief systems within political movements like MAGA, where loyalty to group narratives often supersedes engagement with contradictory evidence.
4. The “Tragedy of the Science Communications Commons”
The paper identifies a collective action problem: while society benefits from evidence-based policy, individuals benefit more from maintaining beliefs that affirm their cultural identity. This creates a “tragedy of the commons” where rational individual behavior leads to irrational collective outcomes.
Relevance to Contemporary Political Movements
The paper’s findings illuminate several features of modern political movements, including MAGA:
- Why fact-checking often backfires: People with strong analytical skills use them to discredit inconvenient facts rather than update their beliefs
- The role of identity over information: Political beliefs function more as identity markers than empirical claims
- Elite polarization: The finding that numeracy increases polarization helps explain why political elites and educated partisans often display more extreme views than average citizens
Solutions Proposed
Rather than more education or technocratic governance, the authors suggest:
- Protecting the “science communication environment” from becoming entangled with cultural identity markers
- Finding ways to present information that doesn’t trigger identity-defensive responses
- Recognizing that the problem isn’t cognitive inability but rather the hijacking of cognitive abilities for identity protection
Conclusion
This research fundamentally challenges how we think about political polarization and the role of education in democracy. It suggests that the deep divisions in contemporary politics – including those associated with the MAGA movement – stem not from stupidity or ignorance, but from the human tendency to use intelligence in service of group belonging rather than truth-seeking. The paper implies that addressing modern political polarization requires not just better information or education, but fundamental changes to how politically relevant information is communicated and discussed in ways that don’t trigger identity-protective responses.