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on the perpetuation of ignorance
One of my regular podcasts is The Skeptics Guide to the Universe, which features a "science or fiction" segment where the host tries to stump the panel to distinguish obscure science news items from roughly plausible science fictions, following up with discussion of details. A recent segment included the following assertion:
"A new study shows that people avoid information about topics about which they are ignorant and yet deem important." (SGU#332 - 11/26/2011)
It turns out that this was based on research published by the American Psychological Association in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; the details are particularly interesting for an election year where the economy is a major issue. The full paper is available for review, so you can find it yourself.
The study asked the question of how people behave when faced with recognized ignorance about personally important but complicated subjects, and found that ignorance in such topics is self-reinforcing, particularly in subjects where experts in government are supposedly in charge. That is, "a lack of knowledge about a specific sociopolitical issue will (a) foster feelings of dependence on the government, which will (b) increase system justification and government trust, which will (c) increase desires to avoid learning about the relevant issue when information is negative or when information valence is unknown. ... In the contexts of energy, environmental, and economic issues, the authors present 5 studies that (a) provide evidence for this specific psychological chain (i.e., ignorance about an issue --> dependence --> government trust --> avoidance of information about that issue)"
Prior to going much further, I should repeat something I've written elsewhere:
The social sciences have a harder time than physical sciences - measurement is complicated by the constantly changing psychology of the experimenter and the subjects, parameters can be nebulous, there are so many uncontrolled variables in human differences, and test conditions can be subject to environmental effects that are not recorded in the lab notes or published works. My sense is that social sciences often overreach when they try to quantify individual and group behavior, because there is no overcoming many of these difficulties beyond the most rudimentary of conditions. Perhaps for these reasons we should be a little more skeptical of other broad claims and predictions in the social sciences
With that proviso, the details of this paper are of some interest. The five studies build up the thesis in stages that address each of these links. Over 400 people were involved, from Canada and the United States. The measurement protocol involved concrete statements by the subjects about their sense of ignorance, helplessness, and interest in (for example) dealing with the recession. The interview protocol differentiated between immediate versus more long term effects, as one way to control for personal relevance of the subjects. It cites many other studies that treats constituent aspects of related human behavior.
Here is one of the intermediate results: "When participants read a complex description of how the economy operates, they exhibited increased perceptions of helplessness in getting through the economic downturn, and this in turn predicted an increase in perceived dependence on the government to manage the economy. This sense of dependence then predicted increased trust in the government to deal with the economy, which in turn predicted an increased desire to “turn a blind eye” to economic issues and ignore the problem."
In short, this study reports on the people that conducted and participated in the study. As stated in the Implications, "Clearly, some people do seek more information when they feel unknowledgeable about a specific issue and/or when problems become more severe, and some people show reactance to feelings of government dependence". I'll be interested in follow-up and replicative studies, but in the mean time have a new model to consider when thinking about the public reaction to politics this year.