Cultural Consensus Summary

In Dan Kahan’s Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus, he concludes that cultural cognition, or the “tendency of individuals to form risk perceptions congenial to their values”, shapes individual beliefs on several “high-risk” issues . These issues include climate change, the disposal of nuclear waste, concealed handguns, and more. His biggest source of contention is that society cannot agree on what scientific consensus is, even when there is information available to indicate a majority or lack thereof. However, he claims that people are not unexposed or indifferent to scientific facts. Although they require scientists to make sense of raw data, they are not scientifically illiterate. Rather, people disagree on what scientists are telling …show more content…
Kahan assumes that the cultural cognition thesis is correct, and can be applied to how people perceive scientific facts. He implements this thesis to argue that individuals can be psychologically disposed to believe that the behavior of them and their peers are honorable, therefore socially beneficial. Thus, behaviors outside their norms have negative social impacts. This thesis also predicts and assumes that individuals will remember the experts who take their positions rather than scientists who disagree with them, which creates a false sense of majority opinion. In other words, scientific consensus is formed based on a person’s predispositions and values, not necessarily the facts or majority of scientific …show more content…
I would argue that experiences are shaped by factors such as race and gender, especially in unequal societies, and that’s where our values stem from. When people are greeted with opposing viewpoints, they often solidify their viewpoints more. Scientists can remedy this by taking up some of the methods Kahan mentioned in his conclusion. For example, narrative framing allows individuals to assimilate information into “existing narrative templates or schemes” that give that information meaning. Or, in other words, narrative framing aims to make the obscure accessible, and the foreign domestic. Scientists can craft their message to fit the narratives of less than receptive groups without changing the data . Furthermore, according to Kahan, individuals are more open-minded to change when they feel that a scientist shares their values. For this issue, he calls upon the scientific community to essentially diversify their opinions and bring in scientists with different values. Again, if Kahan had controlled for the race or genders (potentially even listing the hobbies or political standings) of the scientists he used in his data set, we could have seen if there was a direct correlation. Perhaps even no photographs of