Podcast appearances and mentions of Dan Kahan

Confirmation bias is shaping your decisions right now. Not occasionally. Every day. And the unsettling part is that the smarter you are, the harder it is to see it happening. By the end of this episode you'll know exactly what confirmation bias is. How to recognize when it has taken over a room. And three specific practices that actually work. Not borrowed frameworks, but what forty years of high-stakes decisions has taught me. Let's get into it. What Is Confirmation Bias? Confirmation bias is your brain's tendency to seek out, favor, and remember information that confirms what you already believe, filtering out everything that contradicts it. Most people think that just means seeking out information that agrees with them. That's part of it. But here's what makes it truly dangerous. Once you form a strong belief, three things happen automatically. Unequal Evaluation. Picture two studies landing on your desk. One says your strategy is working. One says it isn't. You read the first and nod. You read the second and start looking for the flaw: the methodology, the sample size, the funding source. Selective Memory. Your brain doesn't store evidence equally. What supports your belief stays accessible. What contradicts it becomes harder to recall the longer you hold the belief. The Backfire Effect. When someone directly challenges a belief you hold, your brain treats it as a threat. The response isn't reconsideration. It's defense. Studies show you actually leave the argument more convinced than when you entered it. Together, the longer you hold a belief and the more it matters to you, the harder it becomes to change, no matter how much evidence says you should. Confirmation Bias in Today's World Confirmation bias has always been part of human thinking. What's changed is the environment around it. Algorithms feed you content that matches what you already believe. Social media shows you opinions from people who think like you. Search engines rank results based on what you've clicked before. Every system you interact with daily is built to confirm your existing views. Not by accident, but because confirmation keeps you engaged. The result compounds. The more confirming information you consume, the stronger your existing beliefs become. The stronger your beliefs become, the more your brain filters out opposing information. The more that information gets filtered, the harder it becomes to update your thinking, even when updating is exactly what the situation demands. This is mindjacking in action. The systematic replacement of your thinking by systems built to do it for you. And confirmation bias is one of its most powerful tools. It's visible everywhere. In public discourse where people can no longer agree on basic facts. In organizations that keep funding failing strategies long after the evidence says stop. In leaders who build teams designed to tell them what they want to hear. You might assume that smarter, more experienced people are less susceptible to this. The research says otherwise. The Smartest Person in the Room Gets It Wrong Here's what surprises most people. Confirmation bias doesn't get weaker as you get smarter. It gets stronger. Dan Kahan at Yale ran a study. He gave people a math problem where the correct answer contradicted their political beliefs. The smarter the person, the more likely they were to get the answer wrong, in the direction that protected their belief. More intelligence, applied more effectively, in service of the conclusion they'd already reached. A smart person who has formed a wrong belief is better at defending it. They find flaws in the opposing data faster. They construct more sophisticated arguments. They're more convincing to others and to themselves. I watched this play out in a board meeting. A CEO had championed a major strategy. Three separate analyses came back contradicting it. Each time, he found a different flaw in the methodology. By the end of the meeting he'd convinced the room the data was unreliable. The strategy continued. The outcome was exactly what the data predicted. He wasn't dishonest. He was skilled. His intelligence was working against him. And everyone in that room let it happen. If you're intelligent, experienced, and confident in your judgment, you are not immune to confirmation bias. You are more vulnerable to it. If you know someone who is always the smartest person in the room, send them this episode. They need it more than most. How to Overcome Confirmation Bias: What Actually Works Knowing about confirmation bias doesn't stop it. I know this from experience, not from research. I've been in rooms where everyone understood exactly what was happening and it happened anyway. What works is different from what you've probably been taught. Catch It in Yourself: The Flip Debate The moment I've most reliably caught confirmation bias operating in myself hasn't come from a checklist or a framework. It's come from a specific kind of conversation. I keep a small group of trusted advisors, people I call my kitchen cabinet. These aren't peers. They're almost never inside the organization. They have no stake in the outcome and no incentive to tell me what I want to hear. When I'm about to make a significant decision and I feel the pull of certainty, I take it to one of them. The conversation has a specific structure. I argue my position, fully and genuinely, the strongest version I can make. Then I stop. And I argue the opposite. Not a token acknowledgment of the other side. A real debate. I take the side I'm most resistant to and make the best case I can for it. What happens in that second argument is where confirmation bias shows up. The gaps. The assumptions I'd been protecting. The evidence I'd felt the urge to dismiss. When you're forced to argue a case you don't believe, you find the things you didn't want to see when you were arguing the one you do. An outside advisor is essential. Someone who will push back, ask hard questions, and notice when the flip argument is being faked. You can't do this with someone who needs something from you. The absence of stakes is what makes the honesty possible. Catch It in a Room: Two Signals to Watch For I've learned to watch for two signals that tell me confirmation bias has taken over a room. Both are visible before the decision is made. Almost everyone misses them. The first signal is the unwillingness to debate the other side. When a room has really decided, before the discussion is officially over, nobody wants to argue the opposing position. Not even hypothetically. Raise the other side and watch what happens. Eyes go flat. The conversation moves on. Someone changes the subject. If a room can't genuinely engage with the strongest case against the preferred direction, confirmation bias is driving. The second signal is circular justification. Listen for reasoning that keeps returning to its own starting point. The evidence for the decision is the decision itself. When you can't find an external reason, just a restatement of the conclusion, confirmation bias is driving. When I hear circular justification in a room, I stop the conversation. Not to embarrass anyone. To name what's happening. "We're not evaluating anymore. We're confirming. Let's go back to the evidence." That single intervention has changed the outcome of more decisions than any framework I've ever been taught. Change How You Decide: Full Options, Real Challenge Here's the most consistent change I've made in my own decision-making, and it comes directly from watching what confirmation bias costs people: I force a full pros and cons analysis on every serious option. Not just the one I'm leaning toward. This sounds obvious. Almost nobody does it. The natural pull is to build the case for the option that already feels right and compare it against the weaknesses of the alternatives. That's confirmation bias disguised as analysis. What I do instead is give every option on the table the same treatment. The best case for it. The best case against it. Without knowing in advance which one I'm going to choose. For decisions that carry real weight, I take it further. I bring in my brain trust: direct reports who will tell me what I don't want to hear, kitchen cabinet advisors, trusted board members. I ask specifically for the challenges. Not validation. Not enthusiasm. The places where the thinking is weak, the assumptions that might not hold, the evidence I might have filtered out. One question has changed how I approach every major decision: what am I not seeing? The answers, from people who have no incentive to protect my view, are exactly where the confirmation bias lives. Confirmation Bias Exercise: Try This Today This week, before you finalize any decision you've already started leaning toward, do one thing. Find one person outside your organization, someone with no stake in the outcome, and run the flip debate. Argue your position fully. Then stop and argue the opposite, with the same effort and commitment. Don't summarize the other side. Argue it. Make the best case you can for the view you're most resistant to. Notice what comes up in that second argument. The gaps. The assumptions. The evidence you'd been setting aside. That's where your confirmation bias is living. Run that exercise this week. Not once. Every time you feel the pull of certainty on a decision that matters. The Benefits of Overcoming Confirmation Bias The payoff from these practices compounds over time. Examined beliefs are more reliable than accumulated ones. Decisions that accounted for opposing evidence hold up better than decisions that filtered it out. Judgment that evaluates rather than confirms earns a different kind of trust from the people around you. Beyond your own decisions, catching confirmation bias makes you harder to capture. Every algorithm, every platform, and every persuader around you is built to exploit it. Seeing it operate in yourself reduces their leverage over your thinking. That's what these practices build. Not certainty. Something better. Examined confidence.  

Why do watch debates get so heated, so fast — and why does no one ever change their mind? On episode 34 of the SJX Podcast, Brandon sits down with King Flum, collector and author of the ScrewDownCrown Substack, to dig into the psychology behind the arguments that define online watch communities.Drawing on research from psychologists including Jonathan Haidt and Dan Kahan, the conversation covers why our preferences form before we start thinking, why smarter collectors tend to construct more elaborate — not more objective — arguments, and why an attack on your watch can feel like an attack on you personally.Read more here: https://www.screwdowncrown.com/p/your-brain-is-a-defence-lawyer-watch-forum-psychology Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I spoke on Human Rationality and Academic Freedom at the Dissident Dialogues event in New York this year. Drawing from my book, Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters, I explore why rational thinking is essential yet slowly becoming elusive in our society.Today we have what Dan Kahan calls expressive rationality which is allegiance to a social group, and right or left wing political loyalty - both of which often interfere with reasoned study and dialogue.In an era where academic freedom is under threat, with individuals being canceled or fired for expressing their views, it is crucial to protect and develop our institutions of reason. #Rationality #AcademicFreedom #DissidentDialogues#Rationality #AcademicFreedom #DissidentDialogues #pinker #cognitivepsychology #podcast #psychology #science #stevenpinker #motivation #success #mindset #sound #mind #brain #imagination #languagedevelopment #language #words #magic #memorizing #social #mechanism #humanbehavior #fear #expressions #music #universal #genetics #equalitynow Follow me: Twitter: https://bitly.ws/3eEx6 Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/Stevenpinkerpage/?_rdc=1&_rdr Website: https://stevenpinker.org/

John Jost talks about his childhood, education, cowboys and Indians, the psychology of political conservatism and system justification, the horseshoe theory of political orientation, ideological asymmetries, political polarization, capitalism, fear of socialism, the existence of racial microaggressions, being misunderstood by the left and the right, and the work of Ezra Klein, Mahzarin Banaji, Joshua Greene, Kurt Gray, Dan Kahan, Jonathan Haidt, and Jordan Peterson. My links: Substack: https://ideassleepfuriously.substack.com Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Ideas_Sleep Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ideas_Sleep

Is Big Data able to take decisions for us, humans? In this episode, we talk to the Big Data expert from nPowered, Piotr Jegier about the traps that many of us will encounter as we start to rely more any more on data. We dive into the topic of cognitive biases and try to understand in what domains humans still can't be replaced by AI.IMPORTANT LINKSnPowered - what we doPiotr's twitterFlat Earthers' documentary - BEHIND THE CURVE | Official HD Trailer (2018) | DOCUMENTARY | Film Threat Trailers (YT)Things that correlate, but that does not really mean anything (Spurious Correlations by Tyler Vigen)The software that helps judges make bail decisions, which does not like black peopleJohn Cleese on Creativity, including open vs. closed mode (YT)Modern portfolio theory, ie. making sure your many mistakes of forecasting compensate each other (Wikipedia)Traveling Wilburys, the supergroup and the history behind their nameAn article on The Butterfly Effect and Edward Lorenz's contribution to the Chaos TheoryOn the often-discussed death of strategy in business in these turbulent times - IMD: Strategy is dead? Long live strategic thinking!. Diagnostics, alternatives and choice By Emeritus Professor Paul StrebelAn interesting article on what you might make when you do strategy, includes the strategy statement and the strategic sweet spot: - Can You Say What Your Strategy Is? by David J. Collis and Michael G. RukstadComments by the CEO of T-Mobile Poland on "turning the tanker around"Ethics and addiction in tech product design: How Technology is Hijacking Your Mind — from a Magician and Google Design Ethicist, by Tristan HarrisWhat is the Turing Test? (a short video from Cnet on YT)On the General AI and the control problem (YT) - Can we build AI without losing control over it? | Sam Harris (TED)Confirmation Bias - a good intro by Shahram Heshmat Ph.D. on Psychology TodayA Vox article outlining the work of Dan Kahan on how the (politically) motivated reasoning makes us stupid, and how scientific curiosity can counteract this effectA place where you can learn more on Open Science movement and pre-register your research hypotheses - Center for Open Science - preregister your hypothesesAI Control Problem (Wikipedia)An episode of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast, "The Destroyer of Worlds" on the difficult and risky early years of the nuclear cold war on EarthA selection of 10 particularly non-obvious "For Dummies" booksAn inspiring introduction and overview of Getting Things Done method (and book) by its creator, David Allen, on Google Tech TalksAn accessible and irreverent discussion of the Extended Mind article by Andy Clark and David Chalmers and the distributed cognition concept, on the Very Bad Wizards podcastPeter Thiel's favorite job interview question, as written up by QuartzThe original article on the primacy and precedence of (moral) emotions compared to reasoning - more accessible writeups are also easy to find online - The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment, Jonathan Haidt, University of Virginia

In this episode, our guest is Dan Kahan about his research into how people consume and interpret science news. In an era of fake news, motivated reasoning, and alternative facts, important questions need to be asked about how people understand new information. Dan is a member of the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale University, a group of scholars interested in studying how cultural values shape public risk perceptions and related policy beliefs. In a paper titled Cultural cognition of scientific consensus, Dan and co-authors Hank Jenkins‐Smith and Donald Braman discuss the "cultural cognition of risk" and establish experimentally that individuals tend to update their beliefs about scientific information through a context of their pre-existing cultural beliefs. In this way, topics such as climate change, nuclear power, and conceal-carry handgun permits often result in people. The findings of this and other studies tell us that on topics such as these, even when people are given proper information about a scientific consensus, individuals still interpret those results through the lens of their pre-existing cultural beliefs. The ‘cultural cognition of risk’ refers to the tendency of individuals to form risk perceptions that are congenial to their values. The study presents both correlational and experimental evidence confirming that cultural cognition shapes individuals’ beliefs about the existence of scientific consensus, and the process by which they form such beliefs, relating to climate change, the disposal of nuclear wastes, and the effect of permitting concealed possession of handguns. The implications of this dynamic for science communication and public policy‐making are discussed.

On Season 2, Episode 10 of Hyperlink Radio, it's Part 2 of The Seventh Generation—our two-part special on climate change. Host David Grabowski walks us through the underlying issues of the climate change crisis which he asserts isn't climate change itself, but the political stalemate that's blocking nationwide action. To get to the bottom of things, David is joined by Dan Kahan—the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law & Professor of Psychology at Yale Law School and head of the Cultural Cognition Project. Much of Dan's research has focused on the political polarization around climate change and getting to the root of why it exists. The answers will probably surprise you. David also chats with Valerie Bane—she's the Chapter Leader for the Sacramento Chapter of Citizen's Climate Lobby, a nonpartisan group that advocates for political climate change action through a measure called Carbon Fee and Dividend. Valerie explains what that is and why it might be the best bipartisan political measure for lowering emissions in America. The movement to fight climate change may be the most important period in human history, David summarizes. If you're a concerned citizen, this is the episode for you! (Don't miss out on Part 1 if you haven't heard it yet.)

I det här avsnittet pratar Christer Sturmark med Dan Kahan som är professor i juridik och psykologi. I sin forskning har Dan Kahan upptäckt att vi människor bedömer fakta på olika sätt beroende av vilken värdegrund vi har, så kallad "motivated reasoning". Han har kunnat visa att vi inte är objektiva när vi analyserar fakta utan att vi väger in huruvida de talar för eller emot vår grunduppfattning.

Do you have strong views on climate change, taxes, health care, or gun control? Do you think the evidence and reason support your side of the debate? How do you know you’re right? David and Tamler discuss a recent paper by Dan Kahan and colleagues showing how prone people are to make errors in processing information to favor positions they are predisposed to believe. And even more shocking: the higher your numeracy skills, the more prone you are to fall prey to this bias. So how do we correct for this? Can we know anything at all with any confidence? Could it be that 'Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret' in not in fact a completely accurate depiction of how young girls think about puberty? Plus, we decide whether to join Neil deGrasse Tyson as a citizen of Rationalia. To paraphrase Mr. T, I pity the newscasters!LinksReflections on Rationalia by Neal deGrasse Tyson [facebook.com]Vulcan learning pods from Star Trek (2009). [youtube.org]Kahan, D. M., Peters, E., Dawson, E. C., & Slovic, P. (2013). Motivated numeracy and enlightened self-government. Yale Law School, Public Law Working Paper, (307). [uoregon.edu]Ditto, P. H., & Lopez, D. F. (1992). Motivated skepticism: Use of differential decision criteria for preferred and nonpreferred conclusions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(4), 568. [phi.org]

How well do you know your Rocky quotes? Super fan and broadcaster Dan Kahan joins in or a roundtable Rocky discussion and quizzes Rocky's famous lines to Ryan, Ruban and Kyle Pederson. 

Why do people stand in line? Or is it “on line”? Of course it isn’t. But the question remains. We talk with Dave Fagundes, scholar of, among many other things, roller derby, who has written the cutting edge article on why we form lines even without laws requiring them. Discussion ranges from cronuts to rock bands to carpool lanes to phone apps. This show’s links: Dave Fagundes’s faculty profile and writing The decision in Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center and Steve Vladeck’s reaction, Steve’s having discussed this case in episode 38 David Fagundes, Waiting in Line: Norms, Markets, and the Law Episodes 31 and 32, in which there are links and discussion concerning the “knee defender” controversy and airline seat reclining David Fagundes, Talk Derby to Me: Intellectual Property Norms Governing Roller Derby Pseudonyms A stachexchange thread about standing “in line” vs. “on line” The word “spendy” dates from 1911 at the latest How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk, a quiz to see your personal dialect map Hella Blitzgeral, roller derbyist Lisa Bernstein, Opting out of the Legal System: Extralegal Contractual Relations in the Diamond Industry Robert Ellickson, Of Coase and Cattle: Dispute Resolution Among Neighbors in Shasta County (and more in his book, Order Without Law) Philosophy Bites: Lisa Bortolotti on Irrationality Louis Kaplow and Steven Shavell, Fairness versus Welfare: Notes on the Pareto Principle, Preferences, and Distributive Justice Leon Mann, Queue Culture: The Waiting Line as a Social System About cronuts Carol Rose, Possession as the Origin of Property Thomas Merrill and Henry Smith, Optimal Standardization in the Law of Property: The Numerus Clausus Principle An example of a “queuing app” About the “tit for tat” strategy and its connection to human nature in Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation An excerpt on social norms from Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational The excerpt on videphones from David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest; see also Infinite Summer Michael Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (his Tanner Lecture) Lior Strahilevitz, How Changes in Property Regimes Influence Social Norms: Commodifying California's Carpool Lanes David Fagundes, The Pink’s Paradox: Excessively Long Food Lines as Overly Strong Signals of Quality, referring to Pink’s Hot Dogs; see also Sally’s Apizza The set of policies for “Krzyzewskiville,” the grassy lawn at Duke where students line up for days to get basketball tickets Catherine Eade, Diplomatic (Snow) Storm Erupts After American Ambassador to Switzerland Criticises Its Ski Lift Queues About power distance index John Wiseman, Aspects of Social Organisation in a Nigerian Petrol Queue Lior Strahilevitz, Charismatic Code, Social Norms, and the Emergence of Cooperation on the File-Swapping Networks (discussing reciprocity cascades) Dan Kahan, The Logic of Reciprocity: Trust, Collective Action, and Law Felix Oberholzer-Gee, A Market for Time: Fairness and Efficiency in Waiting Lines Stanley Milgram, Response to Intrusion into Waiting Lines Special Guest: Dave Fagundes.

This week we're talking about science and evidence in the political process. We'll talk to Dan Kahan, Professor of Law and Professor of Psychology at Yale Law School, about the Cultural Cognition Project, which studies group values and perceptions of risk in science communication. We'll speak to Shane Trimmer, Executive Director of Franklin's List, about their work to elect pro-science candidates. And biologist Katie Gibbs returns with an update on Evidence for Democracy, which advocates for the transparent use of evidence in Canadian government policy.

As two top researchers studying the science of science communication—a hot new field that combines psychology with public opinion research—Dan Kahan and Stephan Lewandowsky agree about most things.There's just one problem. The little thing that they disagree on—whether it actually works to tell people, and especially political conservatives, that there's a "scientific consensus" on climate change—has huge practical significance.In this episode, Kahan and Lewandowsky debate the issue. It also features a discussion of the strange and disturbing disappearance of moose across much of the United States, and of Oprah's recent claim that self-described atheist swimmer Diana Nyad isn't actually an atheist.Subscribe:itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/inquiring-minds/id711675943feeds.feedburner.com/inquiring-minds

Host: Chris Mooney So who's right, factually, about politics and science? Who speaks truth, and who's just spinning? It's kind of the million dollar question. If we could actually answer it, we'd have turned political debate itself into a... well, a science. And is such an answer possible? What does the scientific evidence suggest? In this episode of Point of Inquiry, Chris Mooney brought back a popular guest from last year, Yale's Dan Kahan, to discuss this very question-one that they've been emailing about pretty much continually ever since Kahan appeared on the show. In the episode, Kahan and Mooney not only review but debate the evidence on whether "motivated" ideological biases are the same on both sides of the political aisle—or alternatively, whether they're actually "asymmetrical." Dan Kahan is the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law and Professor of Psychology at the Yale Law School. He's also the Eli Goldston Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. His research focuses on "cultural cognition"-how our social and political group affiliations affect our views of what's true in contested areas like global warming and nuclear power-and motivated reasoning. Before then, he served as a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, of the U.S. Supreme Court (1990-91) and to Judge Harry Edwards of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (1989-90).

Host: Chris Mooney Why do Americans claim to love science, but then selectively reject its findings when they're inconvenient? And why do some cultural groups reject certain types of scientific findings (about, say, harm to the environment), whereas others reject others? Yale law professor Dan Kahan is doing some of the most cutting edge work right now when it comes to figuring this out. Kahan is trying to resolve what he has called the "American Culture War of Fact," by determining how it is that our core values-whether we are "individualists" or "communitarians," "hierarchs" or "egalitarians"—can sometimes interfere with our perceptions of reality.  Most intriguingly—or, if you prefer, disturbingly—Kahan has found that deep-seated values even determine who we consider to be a scientific expert in the first place. His results have very large implications for how to depolarize an array of scientific issues-and how to communicate about controversial science in general. Dan Kahan is the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law at Yale Law School. In addition to risk perception, his areas of research include criminal law and evidence. He has served as a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court (1990-91) and to Judge Harry Edwards of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (1989-90).