Dmkahan's Blog (4)

"Dual process" theories of reasoning -- which have been around for a long time in social psychology -- posit (for the sake of forming and testing hypotheses; positing for any other purpose is obnoxious) that there is an important distinction between two types of mental operations.

Very generally, one of these involves largely unconscious, intuitive reasoning and the other conscious,…

We often are told that "dire news" on climate change provokes dissonance-driven resistance.

Yet many commentators who…

In an earlier post, I presented some data that displayed how public perceptions of risk vary across putative hazards and how perceptions of each of those risks varies between cultural subgroups.  

The risk perceptions were measured by asking respondents to indicate on “a scale of 0-10 with 0 being ‘no risk at all’ and 10 meaning ‘extreme risk,’ how much risk…

Was at a conference recently & a (perfectly nice & really smart) guy in the audience warns everyone not to take social psychology data on risk perception too seriously: "some of the studies have R2's of only 0.15...."

Oy.... Where to start? Well how about with this: the R2 for viagra effectiveness versus placebo ...…