Science Curiosity and Political Information Processing
By Dan Kahan, Asheley Landrum, K. Carpenter, Laura Helft, Kathleen Hall Jamieson. 2017
178 citations recorded by the source corpus.
This paper describes evidence suggesting that science curiosity counteracts politically biased information processing. This finding is in tension with two bodies of research. The first casts doubt on the existence of “curiosity” as a measurable disposition. The other suggests that individual differences in cognition related to science comprehension - of which science curiosity, if it exists, would presumably be one - do not mitigate politically biased information processing but instead aggravate it. The paper describes the scale-development strategy employed to overcome the problems associated with measuring science curiosity. It also reports data, observational and experimental, showing that science curiosity promotes open-minded engagement with information that is contrary to individuals’ political predispositions. We conclude by identifying a series of concrete research questions posed by these results.
Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/549b3dcb4c8d1396fece3f81e1b1a7c16e2a8325
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In Cognitive Neuroscience
In Sociology and Political Science
Citations in the corpus
- Swedish teenagers’ difficulties and abilities to determine digital news credibility (2019, background): “It has also been noted that attitudes to news, scientific curiosity and socio-economic factors may influence how people navigate new information, facts and digital environments (Hatlevik et al., 2015; Kahan et al., 2017; Strömbäck et al., 2013).”