Are you objective?
Of course you are! And probably above average, too!
In today's New York Times Editorialist Neil Irwin comments that in his experience people's economic views depend upon whether their party is in power. We've seen it all before here. How people see evolution depends upon their religion. How people see immigration depends upon whether they're members of the majority race in their country. How people view gun control depends upon whether they own guns. And so on.
Those of us with entrenched beliefs (that would be all of us, in case there's any doubt) must always be ready and willing to make sure those beliefs are supported by the data. And we must also be willing to give serious consideration to accusations, as upsetting as they may be, that we are distorting the data or its interpretation to suit our purposes.
Irwin goes on to describe the reason for the editorial, the results of a study showing that if you reward people for their answer they become less partisan. As he puts it:
quote:
The paper by Mr. Bullock, Alan S. Gerber, Seth J. Hill and Gregory A. Huber found that offering a $1 payment for a correct response and a 33-cent payment for an answer of Don’t know eliminated the entire partisan gap between Democrats and Republicans on questions about the economy.
So we
*can* be less partisan if we want, but most people need a little motivation. Or maybe the payment made them consider the questions more seriously (in the sense that they think about the questions instead of how they can get rid of this inquisitive bloke).
There may be some poll-specific effect in play here, but in any case, we shouldn't need any motivation for producing non-partisan answer beyond a desire to get things right.
But it's complicated. Too often we believe we've already exerted the effort to get an opinion right, and once formed we're extremely reluctant to reconsider it. But circumstances might have changed, there might be new evidence, we might have failed to consider some evidence during our original examination, who knows. No matter how well considered our opinion might be, it could still be wrong, in which case we must regather evidence, reevaluate, reexamine, etc.
Even when all the data is on our side, humans have an innate ability to confound it, so the data has to be explained again and again. Making matters worse, large numbers of people can't tell good evidence from bad. These factors cause evidence nullification - we saw it most famously in the O. J. Simpson trial. I'm sure many often ask themselves what is the point of holding well considered and informed opinions when so many take the easier route of adopting whatever opinions feel best to them.
Anyway, here's a call for maintaining our objectivity in 2016.
--Percy