How effective is education at correcting misperceptions

Whether its GMOs or pesticides or economic effects of various food policies, it seems that the public often holds beliefs that are at odds with what the experts believe.  A natural tendency - especially for someone who is an educator - it to propose that we need more education on these topics.

But, how effective are we at changing people's minds?  This article in Pacific Standard by the psychologist David Dunning might give us pause.  

The research suggests:

“What’s curious is that, in many cases, incompetence does not leave people disoriented, perplexed, or cautious. Instead, the incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence, buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge.”

But, before you start feeling too confident in your own abilities, read the following:

“An ignorant mind is precisely not a spotless, empty vessel, but one that’s filled with the clutter of irrelevant or misleading life experiences, theories, facts, intuitions, strategies, algorithms, heuristics, metaphors, and hunches that regrettably have the look and feel of useful and accurate knowledge. This clutter is an unfortunate by-product of one of our greatest strengths as a species. We are unbridled pattern recognizers and profligate theorizers. Often, our theories are good enough to get us through the day, or at least to an age when we can procreate. But our genius for creative storytelling, combined with our inability to detect our own ignorance, can sometimes lead to situations that are embarrassing, unfortunate, or downright dangerous—especially in a technologically advanced, complex democratic society that occasionally invests mistaken popular beliefs with immense destructive power (See: crisis, financial; war, Iraq). As the humorist Josh Billings once put it, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” (Ironically, one thing many people “know” about this quote is that it was first uttered by Mark Twain or Will Rogers—which just ain’t so.)”

Several studies seem to suggest that providing people with a little information may not lead to more agreement on an issue, but rather can result in polarizing opinions. The reason is that information makes use feel more informed, and lets us feel more confident in whatever our political or cultural tendencies would lead us to believe in the first place.  That is, people bend information to reinforce their identity and cultural beliefs. 

An Anthropologist Takes on the Paleo Diet

Interesting TEDx talk by the anthropologist Christina Warner on the accuracy of our beliefs that underlie the modern Paleo Diet.  I particularly enjoyed her discussion around the 11 to 12 minute mark about how many of our current fruits and veggies are modern,  human creations that were no where to be found in the Paleo era.

Frankenfood

Buried in the comments section of an article in the Guardian about a UK retailer selling some American brands that contain GMOs was this comment that made me laugh:

“It should be noted that Frankenstein was not even a hybrid, let alone a gmo. He was a grafted individual, much like today’s grapevines in vineyards and apple trees.”

Assorted Links

Pollan, Bittman et al. opine on desire for national food policy in a Washington Post editorial (I agree with their call to eliminate current farm subsidies, though they don't seem to really understand their effects; the rest is full of platitudes and ill-conceived policies that are unlikely to withstand a serious cost-benefit analysis.  It's this kind of writing that led to the Food Police)

USDA approves a new, healthier GMO potato

I was surprised at this statistic: the most recent water withdrawals data show that withdrawals in 2010 were lower than at any time in the past 40 years back to 1970 (not only are we using less water today, but apparently what is used is much more productive - we're getting more from it).

What's going on inside people's heads when they see controversial food technologies?

That was the question I attempted to answer with several colleagues (John Cresip, Brad Cherry, Brandon McFadden, Laura Martin, and Amanda Bruce) in research that was just published in the journal Food Quality and Preference.

We put people in an fMRI machine and recorded their neural activations when they saw pictures of (or made choices between) milk jugs that had different prices and were labeled as being produced with (or without) added growth hormones or cloning.  

What did we find?

“Our findings are consistent with the evidence that the dlPFC is involved in resolving tradeoffs among competing options in the process of making a choice. Because choices in the combined-tradeoff condition requires more working memory (as multiple attributes are compared) and because this condition explicitly required subjects to weigh the costs and benefits of the two alternatives, it is perhaps not surprising that greater activation was observed in the dlPFC than in the single-attribute choices in the price and technology conditions. Not only did we find differential dlPFC activations in different choice conditions, we also found that activation in this brain region predicted choice. Individuals who experienced greater activation in the right dlPFC in the technology condition, and who were thus perhaps weighing the benefits/costs of the technology, were less likely to choose the higher-priced non-hormone/non-cloned option in the combined-tradeoff condition.”

and

“Greater activation in the amygdala and insula when respondents were making choices in the price condition compared to choices in the combined-tradeoff condition might have resulted from adverse affective reactions to high prices and new technologies, although our present research cannot conclusively determine whether this is a causal relationship. In the price condition, the only difference between choice options was the price, and the prices ranged from $3.00 to $6.50, an increase of more than 100% from the lowest to the highest. Such a large price difference could be interpreted as a violation of a social norm or involve a fearful/painful/ threatening response, which, as just indicated, has been associated with activity in the amygdala and insula. Kahneman (2011, p. 296) argues that these particular brain responses to high prices are consistent with the behavioral-economic concept of loss aversion, in this case, a feeling that the seller is overcharging the buyer.”

The punchline:

“Estimates indicate that the best fitting model is one that included all types of data considered: demographics, psychometric scales, product attributes, and neural activations observed via fMRI. Overall, neuroimaging data adds significant predictive and explanatory power beyond the measures typically used in consumer research.”