This research paper was discussed on NPR recently. It discusses factors effecting peoples perception of climate change evidence, as an exemplar of processing of scientific information. As a thesis it ascribes people to groups – individualists and communalists, and suggests that these groups will recall and assimilate evidence differently depending on their worldview.
This interests me because it reminds me of internationalism research, through the use of the term ‘worldview’ and it’s influence on how we process information. We may see implications here on how students learn science, and this reinforces the idea that we learn science ‘better’ if it is coherent with our worldview. The implications for multicultural science education would be that this suggests that people process scientific information depending on their worldview. The reference to the ‘messenger effect’ may have some implications for who teaches. It would be nice to craft a short post to the OCC about this, but that will need some more thought.
When I read this article, it strikes me because it fits in with my pre-existing ideas. Does this prejudice my ability to interpret the information?
SSRN-Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus by Dan Kahan, Hank Jenkins-Smith, Donald Braman.
Moving Forward 