John Wilkins is tired of the anti-evolutionists:
When I got into this game about 15 years or more ago, I thought that if we just argued and presented information about what evolution really is, and what it means for modern thinking, people would move away from attacking evolution in order to bolster their religious agendas.I was wrong. Very wrong. Information isn't what makes people change their minds. Experience is, and generally nobody has much experience of the facts of biology that underwrite evolution.
John's reflections are part of the reason I think Matt Nisbet's and Chris Mooney's observations on on framing are so important. Like it or not, human beings are cognitive misers. We use shortcuts in reasoning all the time. Only occasionally is an issue so vital that we're willing to reconsider everything from first principles. If we're confronted with an assertion that is counter to other deeply held beliefs, we're liable to dismiss it. If we think about it at all, we're liable to look for reasons why the assertion is wrong.
John's right. “Information isn't what makes people change their minds. Experience is....” So to promote evolution effectively, we need to find ways to “frame” the arguments that will help them relate evolution to everyday experience, e.g., the evolution of multidrug resistant tuberculosis, the evolution of dog breeds, the evolution of cultivated crops. But we also need to remind them that accepting the scientific validity of evolution is compatible with many varieties of religious belief.
If P.Z. Myers or Larry Moran happens across this entry, they're probably not going to like my tolerant attitude towards religion or my adoption of the Nisbet-Mooney “framing” approch. Well, if they happen by, I hope they'lll think abou this article on the neurobiology of framing...
We like to think of ourselves as entirely rational beings, but an article in Science a little over a year ago reminds us that to understand human reasoning, we also have to understand emotion:
Human choices are remarkably susceptible to the manner in which options are presented. This so-called “framing effect” represents a striking violation of standard economic accounts of human rationality, although its underlying neurobiology is not understood. We found that the framing effect was specifically associated with amygdala activity, suggesting a key role for an emotional system in mediating decision biases. Moreover, across individuals, orbital and medial prefrontal cortex activity predicted a reduced susceptibility to the framing effect. This finding highlights the importance of incorporating emotional processes within models of human choice and suggests how the brain may modulate the effect of these biasing influences to approximate rationality. (Science 313:684-687; 2006)
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