The Most Depressing Discovery About the Brain, Ever

By Marty Kaplan

September 16, 2013  |  Yale law school professor Dan Kahan’s new research paper [3] is called “Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government,” but for me a better title is the headline on science writer Chris Mooney’s piece [4] about it in Grist:  “Science Confirms: Politics Wrecks Your Ability to Do Math.” 

 

Kahan conducted some ingenious experiments about the impact of political passion on people’s ability to think clearly.  His conclusion, in Mooney’s words: partisanship “can even undermine our very basic reasoning skills…. [People] who are otherwise very good at math may totally flunk a problem that they would otherwise probably be able to solve, simply because giving the right answer goes against their political beliefs.”