Giving Up A Belief Is Too Risky

Why is it that people will disagree with scientific evidence, even when there is near universal consensus among scientists on a given topic?

This basic question was looked at in a recent paper available through The Social Science Research Network. Although this paper, "Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus," did not look at religion specifically, its findings are likely closely related to religion, too.

Looking to verify what has been known as the “cultural cognition of risk,” the paper’s conclusions assert that “individuals systematically overestimate the degree of scientific support for positions they are culturally predisposed to accept as a result of a cultural availability effect that influences how readily they can recall instances of expert endorsement of those positions.”

In other words, a person is likely to accept assertions by those people who already agree with them, or are seen as culturally close in some fashion. If the majority of “experts” a person is exposed to espouses a certain position, they will tend to agree with it, even if those “experts” compose an extreme minority.

“If individuals more readily count someone as an expert when that person endorses a conclusion that fits their cultural predispositions, individuals of opposing cultural outlooks will over time form opposingly skewed impressions of what most experts believe. As a result, even when experts by and large agree, individuals of diverse world-views will disagree about the state of scientific consensus,” the report concludes.

This idea that people will more easily accept “expert” opinion that is already close to their own opinions is not new. But what is interesting is that this study looked specifically at positions considered risky--climate change, nuclear power and gun control. From a certain point of view, religious belief can also be seen in terms of risk--in an afterlife.

In some religions the risk is one of eternal punishment or banishment. In others it’s a reincarnation scenario where a person could return as a “lower” form of life, for example. If an expert opinion is interpreted as putting the religious believer at risk for a painful or otherwise less-than-ideal afterlife, the expert will more than likely be dismissed; the expert’s opinion is too risky to accept, given the believer’s cultural point of view.

This, of course, is likely the seed for the Pascal’s Wager argument, which basically asserts that the risk of not believing is too great, even if there is no god to believe in. If this study’s conclusions can be applied to religious beliefs--as seems likely--then we now have an wonderful scientific hint at what’s going on in keeping believers believing, even in the face of overwhelming evidence contrary to those beliefs.