According to this view, political passions essentially make people unreasonable, even — indeed, especially — if they tend to be good at reasoning in other contexts. Apparently, more “analytical” Democrats were better able to convince themselves that climate change was a problem, while more “analytical” Republicans were better able to convince themselves that climate change was not a problem. The implications here are profound: Reasoning can exacerbate the problem, not provide the solution, when it comes to partisan disputes over facts. We believe that people often just don’t think critically enough about the information they encounter. A great deal of research in cognitive psychology has shown that a little bit of reasoning goes a long way toward forming accurate beliefs.

Source: New York Times January 19, 2019 19:30 UTC