Cognitive Mechanisms of Social Controversies

Abstract

Is abortion morally acceptable?Is the Earth getting warmer? Should vaccines be mandatory? Beliefs about such issues shape society. And people form these beliefs collectively, by negotiating differences in their views; learning from each other in some cases, and ignoring dissent in others. This dissertation sheds light on the cognitive mechanisms that shape beliefs on such controversies. It does so through four novel contributions. Chapter 1 introduces a principled theoretical framework, the Paths to Persistence Model (PPM), which explains why people persist in their controversial beliefs through informational, ontological, functional, and computational mechanisms. Chapter 2 provides an empirical test of the predictions of this framework across 96 moral, scientific, political, and religious controversies in the U.S through multiple open- and closed-ended studies (N = 3,171). Chapter 3 examines whether people revise their beliefs optimally under the conditions stipulated by the PPM through experiments testing a Bayesian computational model of social learning from aggregated opinion (N = 886). Chapter 4 provides a more naturalistic test of controversial view change through a longitudinal field study examining the causal effect of a moral philosophy course on undergraduate students’ controversial moral beliefs (N = 199). Chapter 5 discusses the theoretical, practical, and normative implications of this body of research: we now have new tools to explain why most belief change interventions fail, generate effective strategies to bridge pervasive social divides, and analyze when persistence amid controversy is an ailment to cure—and when it is an appropriate response to the complex suite of desiderata that human belief must satisfy.