Conservative voters are blind, with deficient mental software, says psychologists, by Joanne Nova.
Naturally, this self-serving, circular, and poorly researched piece is brought to you by The Conversation. Where else? …
The big insight looks like pattern seeking and confirmation bias to me:
When we modified the test to measure people’s attention to climate change, we found people who are concerned about climate change are better at seeing climate-related words, such as carbon, right after the first target than those who are less concerned.
When we analyzed the data, we found a pattern: Conservatives who were less concerned about climate change were less likely to see climate-related words than liberals who were worried about the issue.
Conservatives had better filters for pointless news stories with a prediction success rate lower than random chance. From experience, conservatives have figured out that these news stories are a waste of time. …
Skeptics are an absolute majority and have been for years, repeatedly, consistently, and across the continents. Someone should tell these PhD’s about things called “polls”. A ten-second online search shows 56% of Canadians are skeptics. Likewise, 54% of Australians are skeptics (a CSIRO estimate). The OECD estimates Australian skeptics outnumber believers. A very well done British survey show skeptics are a “minority” of 62%. A third in the US are not just skeptical they think it’s a total hoax. (And that was years ago, before The Trump. It would be higher now.)
If a majority “agreed with the consensus” why is it that most Australians don’t want to pay even a tiny $10 a month for renewables to save the world? Nearly half of US adults don’t want to pay $1 a month. And The British don’t want to pay a cent.
