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When it comes to assessing scientific evidence, conservatives place more value on personal anecdotes, while liberals put more stock into what the experts are saying. Those are among the recent findings by Eureka College's Alexander Swan and his colleagues.

Tim Shelley spoke with him about these studies, and what they could mean as the country battles the COVID-19 pandemic.

TS: Recently, you did a bit of research on the differences between how liberals and conservatives perceive or assess evidence. If you could just talk a little bit about how that worked.

AS: Yes. So over the past two or three years, my collaborator Randy Stein and Michelle Sarraf asked two groups of people to identify their political leanings. And then we asked them to determine the credibility in a scenario.

So for example, we asked participants to read a blurb about the existence of the "hot hand" in gambling or other games of chance. And they read a [fake] excerpt from a researcher saying that the existence of "hot hands" is is disputed, and it doesn't exist.

And that was immediately followed up by a person, in Study One, with relevant experience. So in this case, maybe a casino manager who's directly refuted the researcher's claim. And so we had four scenarios like that.

And then in Study Two, it wasn't a person that had direct relevance of experience to that claim. It was just some commentator or commenter that we said was a previous respondent in the study.

So in Study One, it was a person with relevant experience. And in Study Two, it was just a random person that didn't have any relevant experience. And we asked participants to rate the credibility of each of the statements.

And what we found was that, among liberals and conservatives, liberals tended to put more credibility and more weight into what the researcher had to say about these four scenarios. And conservatives tended to allow the experiential evidence from this other commenter, or this relevant professional. They gave that more credibility and more weight.

And you can see that across both studies, the effect is stronger among conservatives in Study One with the relevant professional, because I assume it has to do with their taking in the relevant professional experience of this other person. And less so in Study Two, because it's just seems like a random person from their perspective. But in both cases, conservatives tended to give more latitude to the non-scientific perspective.

TS: Let's talk about the reasons behind that. Why would somebody who maybe leans more left place more trust in that researcher, while the conservative might place more trust in the other perspective, the anecdotal perspective?

AS: Right, yeah, that's a very good question. So the idea that we we worked with in this paper and in the piece in the conversation was that this effect seems to be somewhat mediated by conservatives' desire to give more weight to intuition, so intuition as their personal truth.

So if somebody expresses an experiential conclusion, they tend to give more weight to that because it's aligning with their trust and faith in their own intuitions -- and intuitions could be antithetical to what the scientists in any given science topic are saying. We don't we don't really see that trust, massive reliance on intuition in the liberal part of the sample, the people who lean more left in the sample.

TS: If we want to take another example, this I know was in the piece in The Conversation, you mentioned how this same dynamic might be playing out in how the perception of COVID-19 if you could just talk a little bit about that.

AS: Since the beginning of the pandemic, I think it's been pretty clear that there have been two competing narratives going on: one from the scientific community, which is 'this is a pretty terrible pandemic. And it's killing a lot of people. And we should take it seriously.'

And then on the other side, the other narrative, it is, you know, 'COVID, not a big deal. It's just like the flu. You know, we shouldn't shut down the economy or do any of these kinds of things.'

And at the very heart of it was President Trump, getting COVID, stating that, and getting the best health care that this country has to offer, and then coming out and stating that it wasn't that big of a deal, it wasn't a big problem.

And I think that feeds into the narrative of the latter side that I mentioned, where people are going to trust his detailing of it because he's the leader. And they're also going to then use that to fuel their own intuitions about their own fears and their own anxieties, and essentially, shove them away while the scientific community is saying, 'No, no, no, no, you need to wear your masks. You need to remain socially distant with among each other, and not have big gatherings for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I know how much that sucks.'

And you have these two competing narratives. And I think that feeds into which narrative you play into. And it's just tragic, that from my personal perspective, it's tragic that we have a situation where we need to trust the science now. And we need to trust what the scientists are saying, not personal experiences or anecdotes.

TS: To lead off of that, my question would be, if I am a scientist or researcher, is there a way I can tailor my message perhaps to appeal more to people who might who might trust these anecdotal messages, moreso than something straight from a scientist's mouth?

That's a good question. I don't know if I have a really good answer for that one. Because the point is not to say that your science is always right. The point is to say that if there is consensus, and we've agreed upon facts that anecdotes and personal experiences do not constitute the enormous amount of data that's being collected in any given topic.

So with the coronavirus pandemic, there's a ton of data, and personal experiences and anecdotes shouldn't be held on equal footing to that massive amounts of data. So I don't know if I have a message to convey to people other than, "Please trust the data on this."

But scientists are biased just like any other human are, which is the main facet of my research, is humans are inherently biased. And it's very difficult to break some of those biases in persuasion. And so I think my thing here is, let's just trust the scientists in this particular one, because time is of the essence. And lives are of the essence.

TS: You've been conducting this research with your colleagues for the last couple years. What other avenues of research does this open up? Where can you branch off from here to explore this?

AS: My collaborator, Randy Stein, and I are going to be talking about follow-ups . One of the things that we're exploring is following this "feelings are truth scale" that we introduce into literature with this paper.

Following that up, finding more avenues where that actually is the case -- that people tend to rely on their intuitions and replace scientific truth with anecdotal or experiential truth, intuitive truth.

And a few colleagues have raised really important questions, which not every single papers going to get at, especially ours. We can't explore every single facet.

One of the interesting questions that I just came across was a scientific literacy plan So our our sample was from across the United States -- and it was only Americans that were allowed to participate here. And we did not asktheir level of scientific knowledge or their level of scientific engagement, and I think that is an important mediator as well, that we might include in future studies.

TS: Alex, was there anything else you wanted to add or that you would like people to know or take away from your work?

AS: Yeah, I we're not trying to we're not trying to vilify conservatives and in any way with this data.

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Study: Conservatives And Liberals Assess Scientific Evidence Differently. Here's Why That Matters - Peoria Public Radio

Did you hear the one about the Chabad rabbi, the settler leader and the Arab sheikh who walked into a kosher steakhouse in Dubai?

Its not the opening of a bizarre joke, but reality in the Persian Gulf today. A delegation of settlers spent the week in the United Arab Emirates, meeting with local businesspeople to explore the possibility of joint ventures. As for Chabad, the most reactionary Jewish sect, its been there for a while, taking control of the local synagogues and kashrut certification.

Haaretz podcast: Trump-loving Israelis brace for a Biden bombshellHaaretz

If anyone had predicted a few months ago that settlers and Trump-supporting Chabadniks would be the vanguard of Israeli peacemaking in the Middle East, you would have said that was too far even for the year of madness that is 2020. But now it all makes a kind of warped sense.

Israel is establishing diplomatic ties with the UAE and Bahrain, and its a right-wing enterprise. Those of us who dreamed of a time when Israelis could freely roam distant corners of the Arab world are bitter about it, because now that the dream is coming true its been tainted for us by the two men who made it happen: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and soon-to-be-former U.S. President Donald Trump.

Thats why weve been so busy poking holes in the Abraham Accords. Its easy, since, as Ehud Barak once said about a different peace agreement, its as full of holes as a Swiss cheese.

For a start, how can you can call something a peace agreement if Israel and the Gulf states were never at war to begin with? And anyway, this isnt really a peace deal, its an arms deal, in which the Emiratis get to buy billions of dollars worth of advanced U.S. military hardware.

Of course, this isnt real peace with nations, just with the elite dictators of oil-rich kleptocracies. (To make this claim, you need of course to ignore the fact that all of Israels peace deals, with Egypt, Jordan and the PLO, were hardly signed with model democracies.)

And Israels real challenge is making peace with the millions of Palestinians it occupies, by allowing them to build their state. The agreements with the UAE and Bahrain push the Palestinians to the furthest margins.

So theres plenty for those who hoped for a Mideast peace predicted on the resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians to be bitter about. And at the same time, its no coincidence that settlers are welcome in Dubai.

This is a peace after their own hearts. For decades, the left told Israelis they would get to fly off to Arab capitals, do business and vacation there only if they first ended the occupation and signed up to the two-state solution. The bitterest medicine to swallow is reality. And dont expect the UAE to suddenly shut the gates just because Trump lost.

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Can the Israel-UAE, Israel-Bahrain and whatever other normalizations follow be detoxified and should they?

There are three answers to this. The first is that Israel is and always will be part of the Middle East, and not every engagement between Israel and Arab countries should be hostage to changing political parameters and the conflict with the Palestinians.

The second is that while the Emiratis, in the short term at least, obviously have little interest in the Palestinians and whether they reach an agreement with Israel, improved relations between Israel and other Arab states will increase Israels stake in creating a different environment in the Middle East.

The Palestinians could be part of this or they could be cast aside, relegated indefinitely to the bottom of the regional agenda. It depends on who will be building these intra-Mideast relationships.

The third answer is less comfortable for liberals, but unavoidable.

This part of the Middle East was headed in this direction anyway, even without the encouragement of the Trump team. Israels not-so-secret alliance with the Gulf states has been in the making for at least two decades. If anything, President Barack Obamas decision to engage with the Iranian leadership and sign the nuclear agreement with them helped bring together Irans enemies in the region.

Those who supported a Palestinians-first diplomacy will find little comfort in the morality and expedience of this approach, and no reassurance in current reality. The transition to a Biden presidency in Washington isnt going to change the strategic decisions made by the rulers of the UAE or of Bahrain. But with Trump and his henchmen soon gone, there will be a vacuum to be filled, and not only by professional diplomats.

There are currently two types of parties involved in Israels burgeoning ties with the Gulf: those aligned with the right wing in Israel and the United States, and businesspeople who are in it for the money. What will this key relationship look like once Team Trump, backed by its Israeli cheerleaders,is no longer in power?

That depends on whether there are other players prepared to move in, from other parts of the political and cultural spectrum.

The same question applies to the broader issue of relations between Israel and Americas Jewish community, the largest in the world, now that people like Jared Kushner and the Adelsons are no longer the most influential Jews in America.

Do liberal American Jews have the energy and the passion to rebuild that connection? After four years of selfish men and their political bases narrowing the bridge between the largest groups in the Jewish people, can it be done?

The past four years were not simply an aberration. The inauguration of President Joe Biden will not be enough in itself to turn back the clock. The landscape has changed, and not just in the Gulf.

According to polls, two-thirds of Israelis wanted Trump to win the election and not because they all support Netanyahu, or are even right-wingers themselves. Even centrist and left-leaning Israelis preferred an administration that seemed to be on their side, and they didnt care that for the overwhelming majority of American Jews four more years of Trump was the darkest of nightmares.

Trumps defeat doesnt mean Israelis are going to suddenly acknowledge the fears and relief of liberal U.S. Jews, and they wont take kindly to even gentle criticism from them.

Normalization with the UAE and Bahrain wasnt just Trumps parting gesture to Netanyahu, the last in a long series of gifts, it was a challenge to the liberal diplomatic paradigm that in the past had transcended the terms of presidents and administrations.

It was the latest piece of proof that perhaps Israelis no longer need their kind American cousins, their philanthropy, lobbying and certainly not their advice. It meant that however American Jews choose to engage with Israel now, in the post-Trump era, it will have to be radically different from anything that went before.

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Get over your liberal guilt about Israels peace with the Gulf - Haaretz.com

Good morning. Im Paul Thornton, and it is Saturday, Nov. 7, 2020. Before we take a look back at the week in Opinion, lets talk about ...

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Oh, to hell with the pithy introduction President Trump appears likely to have lost! Thats a big deal! Arguably the most authoritarian American leader ever ran for reelection, and enough voters seem to have told him no. We passed an important stress test that other liberal societies failed when they acquiesced to a strongmans wish to stay in power. That the president wants to overturn the election only exposes the lethality of the bullet our democracy looks like it just dodged.

This isnt to say were in the clear. As op-ed columnist Nicholas Goldberg explained, given everything we know about Trump his mismanagement of the pandemic, his refusal to accept the emotional burden of the deaths of 236,000 people, his dehumanization of immigrants, his persistent maladaptiveness the fact that he was able to draw tens of millions of votes is just mind-boggling and does not bode well for the months and years ahead. The Times Editorial Board expressed similar discomfort with Trumps less-than-demoralizing defeat and contemplated the implications of his enduring support.

Look, I wanted to see Trump and his sycophantic enablers buried in a landslide as much as the next guy, but after the Obama years we have to learn to accept something less satisfying than a 2008-type realigning election. Globally, authoritarian leaders in seemingly healthy democracies have managed to retain power in free and fair elections, only to go on to make the next election a little less free and a little less fair. For all its faults, the United States appears to have bucked this trend and selected as its next leader someone whose defining characteristics were empathy and competence. This is a wonderful development.

Why arent Democrats dancing in the streets? My thinking aligns more with that of op-ed columnist Virginia Heffernan, who urges liberals to mute their inner self-critics and celebrate the achievement of their biggest goal: the likely election of Biden and Kamala Harris. The problem, according to Heffernan, is that liberals are natural movement joiners, eternally focused on lofty principles but blind to the realities on the ground. She repeats the advice of journalist Windsor Mann, a Republican who voted for Biden: Spike the football. Gloat. L.A. Times

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There is no Latino voting bloc. Get used to it. About of quarter of voters who identify as Latino supported Trump, according to exit polls, leading to howls of dismay among liberals over ... what exactly? That the presidents inhumane border policies should have pushed every Latino voter into the arms of Joe Biden? That assumption isnt just offensively reductive; its not a winning strategy, says Mariel Garza. She writes: Really, we have to go through this again, explaining that Latinos are a racially, culturally, socioeconomically diverse group of people with a wide range of hopes and dreams and political leanings and not a uniform voting bloc? L.A. Times

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On that note, we have a new newsletter dedicated to the complexity of the Latinx experience. Its called the Latinx Files, its free, its weekly, and I encourage you to sign up for it. Nearly half of Los Angeles County and a fifth of all Americans identify as Latino, and the experiences of this diverse group will play an important role in Californias future. The newsletters author is L.A. Times audience engagement editor Fidel Martinez, who each week will send to your inbox his original reporting combined with the best of the papers coverage of Latinx culture, politics, art and much more. L.A. Times

This was the worst week ever for COVID-19 in the United States, and its only getting worse. While you were compulsively refreshing your Twitter feeds for ballot updates, new coronavirus infections set a daily record on Wednesday, then a new one on Thursday, then a new one on Friday. With a president who refuses to take meaningful action and much of the country momentarily distracted by the nontrivial task of rescuing American democracy, the pandemic is bound to get worse in the U.S., writes Mariel Garza: Sorry to be the bearer of bad news at the end of a difficult week, but its good not to lose sight of the fact that theres something more dangerous than partisan politics lurking out there. L.A. Times

If I told you that anticompetitive businesses successfully bought a law, where would you think this happened? In a post-Soviet oligarchy? It actually happened here in California, where voters probably just thought they were helping out their favorite Uber drivers by passing Proposition 22. What they were really doing was allowing money-losing, billionaire-backed companies rewrite a state employment law they didnt like and permanently etching it into the books by making it amendable only by a seven-eighths legislative majority. As the New York Times Shira Ovide charitably put it, Uber and Lyft Go Legit. New York Times

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Opinion: Trump's losing, and liberals are upset? - Los Angeles Times

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I dont know that I trust myself yet to say anything about the election, but theres a little bit I can say.

First, no matter what else, and no matter how close the count was, it looks like Donald Trump is being tossed out of the White House. This is an unalloyed good thing and we should all be breathing a huge sigh of relief over it.

That said, Joe Bidens victory represents only a tiny change in the vote compared to 2016. Trumpism wasnt rejectedhe probably would have won if not for the pandemicand liberalism wasnt embraced. At this point, Republicans still need to come to grips with how Trump took over their party, but Democrats need to come to grips with the fact that they remain a generally unloved alternative. I have my own ideas about why that is, which Ill keep to myself for the time being, but its something that needs to be addressed in a clear-eyed way. No more hiding behind popular vote victories or polls claiming to show that everyone loves our policies. Its obvious that both are misleading. Nor is the answer for the party to be more vigorous about supporting your personal policy preferences. Thats just lazy.

This is all going to be discussed to death over the next few months, and were all going to get sick of it. But the worst thing liberals can do is to keep piddling down the same path as always without giving it much thought. We need to do better.

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Liberals Have Some Soul-Searching to Do Mother Jones - Mother Jones

BERKELEY, Calif./NEW YORK (Reuters) - Rachel Richardson, a lifelong Democrat, is spending Election Day hiking trails along the Pacific Coast with her two daughters and a fellow mom with her kids in tow.

Daughters of David and Rachel Roderick use a map and candidates' pictures up on the wall to learn how the U.S. government works in Berkeley, California, U.S., August 27, 2020. David Roderick/Handout via REUTERS

The 41-year-old Berkeley, California, native who voted for Democrat Joe Biden early said she decided to plan a three-day camping trip to stay away from minute-by-minute election news here and keep anxiety over the potential reelection of Republican President Donald Trump and the pandemic at bay.

I think its now time for me to get a good nights sleep, a few nights in the fresh, clean air with no WiFi signal anywhere in sight, she told Reuters. Away from the noise of peoples responses.

Richardson and husband David Roderick spent the past months educating their children about the election and government along with about two dozen families from one of the most liberal U.S. cities while supporting candidates in key senate races.

Opinion polls show Biden ahead nationally and in many key states, but liberal voters are worried about another upset after Trump, a former real estate developer and reality show personality, unexpectedly won the 2016 election.

Im anxious because we know how the last election got swayed and the way that things went, said 38-year-old Jonathan Krieger after casting his ballot in Brooklyn, New York, on Tuesday morning. I think staying away from the news is my biggest remedy.

Many Democrats despise Trump, whom they see as a threat to American democracy, a liar and a racist, and struggle with the presidents bombastic style and norm-shattering behavior. His supporters admire his lack of convention and what they call straight talk.

Record numbers of Americans, more than 100 million, cast early ballots by mail or in person, leaving little to do but worry until votes are counted. To soothe their nerves, some liberals have doubled down on their pandemic-era coping mechanisms: running and exercising, yoga, meditation or writing.

Sylvia Baer, a New Jersey resident and lifelong progressive who has been quarantining in Florida, is spending the day locked away in her home office in Fort Lauderdale, writing short stories and poems.

Im writing like crazy, said Baer, 70, adding that the day had so far brought more excitement than scare. However, I will have a lovely gin and tonic on hand later this afternoon. Or two.

A professor of American literature and a poet, Baer began writing short memoir-like stories as the coronavirus ravaged her home state and shares them on Facebook as a way of coping with the stream of dreadful news.

The presidential campaign, which pitted Trump against Biden, has tested the nerves of many Americans already exhausted and grief-stricken by months of the unrelenting COVID-19 pandemic.

It also has further exacerbated the already sharp partisan divide here stoked by Trump during his four years as president.

In historically Democratic Ann Arbor, Michigan, sculptor Joe Szutz said things were going as planned at his home in a battleground state that Trump narrowly won in 2016.

Ive been taking it kind of slow. I did some cooking in the morning and I did a workout. Im doing some writing now on the computer and staying away from the TV, said the 77-year-old Democrat, who dropped off ballots for himself, his wife and his 18-year-old daughter, voting for the first time ahead of Election Day.

Szutz said he planned to take advantage of the unseasonably nice weather and rake leaves in his yard.

Registered Democrat Lisa Shapiro, a journalist in New York City who cast her ballot before dawn on Tuesday, said she had set up the ironing board to cut up the fabric for the masks she plans to sew later in the afternoon and into the evening.

She enjoys sewing, something she learned during the pandemic. Its almost the sound of the sewing machine, touching the fabric, she said.

She is not ruling out making a chocolate sheet cake and enjoying a dram of whisky early in the evening.

Classes were canceled at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law on Tuesday, and Emily Bruce, the schools director of equity and inclusion, offered a 30-minute guided meditation session to cope with the anxiety many students are struggling with.

The hope is to offer this as a tool for finding some relief from that, she said.

Reporting by Jane Lanhee Lee in Berkeley, California, Maria Caspani in New York and Ben Klayman in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Editing by Caroline Stauffer, Steve Orlofsky and Grant McCool

Continued here:
'Away from the noise': How Liberal Americans are coping with Election Day anxiety - Reuters