Julian Christensen, a political science researcher at Aarhus University in Denmark, wasn’t particularly surprised to find that a politician’s prior belief affects how they interpret factual information—that much has been shown before. But he was taken back when he saw that politicians doubled down when they were given even more evidence that goes against their prior beliefs. “That was a surprise for us,” he says, adding, “It’s also kind of depressing.”
For the study, Christensen and a group of Danish researchers enrolled 954 Danish politicians from local government to participate in a series of experiments. At the heart of the study was a particularly thorny political debate: The role the private sector should play in the delivery of public services. While some politicians maintain that the public sector is the best supplier of public services, others argue that private contractors deliver services more efficiently. The politicians were randomly assigned to different groups. [...]
Despite this, the findings showed that when politicians were asked to evaluate the information, around 84% to 98% of politicians that received information that fit their prior belief interpreted the information they were given correctly. However, politicians who received information at odds with their beliefs correctly interpreted the information correctly only 38% to 61% of the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment