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Have you ever noticed that your political views can blind you? Have you ever noticed how they can disturb your clarity and logic in your thinking? It’s not all in your head, a psychology paper and research proves that indeed. Actually, according to Dan Kahan’s new research, a Yale law school professor entitled “Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government”, there might be a link to that.
ScienCovery/December, 2013
Kahan’s experiment was on humans. 1,111 participants. The participants were asked first to name their political views then to answer some questions assessing their mathematical abilities. After that, they were asked to interpret a table of the same numbers but each with a different topic. The numbers were fake. The first group was told that these numbers were to evaluate whether a certain skin cream would reduce rashes. The second one were told that these were about whether a law banning citizens from carrying guns will reduce crime rate. Since both tables had the same numbers, if the two groups did the math correctly they would get the same results.
Scientifically confirmed:
Politics and math don't mix!
Nour Hussein
The participants performed differently. It all depended on whether their topic was on the skin scream or the law. The second group couldn’t get the math right because it was conflicting with what they think. However, the first group did the calculations right.