physorg | Individuals tend to
group others based on their perceived morality, often employing
stereotypes to describe individuals or groups of people beliveved to
have different morals or values. According to Fiske et al.,
stereotypes are well described using two dimensions: warmth and
competence. Warmth (or lack of it) refers to the perceived
positive/negative intent of another person, while competence refers to
the other person's capacity to achieve their intent. Using this
terminology, the ingroup, or the group that you belong to, is both warm
and competent, and thus trustworthy. Stereotypes with high perceived
competence and low perceived warmth, including stereotypically wealthy
individuals, are often not trusted because perceived intent is either
unknown or negative. Similarly, scientists have unclear intent due to
their perceived amorality, and they are not trusted.
I believe that in order to incur more trust from the public, scientists must cultivate more warmth from the public.
I propose two ways to achieve this goal. First scientists need to make their intentions clear. Social psychologist Todd Pittinsky,
mentioned in the introduction, has some terrific ideas on how to
clarify intentions. One strategy is open access to data and methods,
which is readily achieved through open access publishing. Scientists
also need to treat misconduct by other scientists more seriously so that
people don't, for example, deem that all vaccine science is fraud due
to one case of misconduct.
Finally, we need to treat science denial without disdain and
acknowledge uncertainty properly when describing scientific results.
Second, scientists need to move into the ingroup sphere by imitating
those already in the ingroup. Kahan et al. point out that an
individual's established ideology greatly influences how they process
new information. I would suggest scientists frame their findings in a
way that fits with the audience's ideology, thus promoting "warmth". For
example, the Pew report
that reveals 37% of the public thinks that GMOs are not safe, which
violates the individual foundations. Highlighting how certain crops can
be genetically engineered for health (e.g. rice that is genetically engineered to produce beta carotene)
shows how GMOs can be compatible with individual foundations. Behaving
like an ingroup can then move scientists into the ingroup sphere.
Battling misinformation is definitely an uphill climb, but it is a
climb scientists must endeavor to make. Climate change denial and the
anti-vaccination movement threatens the future of scientific progress,
and while the danger cannot be ignored, we should not belittle
non-scientific ideas. Scientists can build goodwill through increased
transparency and communicating the significance of their findings to the
public. By taking other worldviews into account, we can find common
ground and create open dialogue and perhaps find solutions to benefit
everyone.
