"Basically the reason that people react in a close-minded way to information is that the implications of it threaten their values," says Dan Kahan, a law professor at Yale University and a member of The Cultural Cognition Project. Kahan says people test new information against their preexisting view of how the world should work. "If the implication, the outcome, can affirm your values, you think about it in a much more open-minded way," he says. And if the information doesn't, you tend to reject it. In another experiment, people read a United Nations study about the dangers of global warming. Then the researchers told the participants that the solution to global warming is to regulate industrial pollution. Many in the individualistic group then rejected the climate science. But when more nuclear power was offered as the solution, says Braman, "they said, you know, it turns out global warming is a serious problem."And for the communitarians, climate danger seemed less serious if the only solution was more nuclear power.
Charles Daney on 03 Oct 09In a recent study, researchers show that a gene called DMRT1 found only on the Z chromosome partly explains bird "maleness". When a ZZ embryo gets less DMRT1, the embryos start to take on some female traits. These studies show us that bird gender can be partly explained by genetics. Not having enough of a single gene can keep a bird from becoming a bona fide male bird. But this doesn't rule out the possibility of a female gene being on the W chromosome. Scientists just haven't yet found one.
