The Cultural Cognition Project looks at how cultural orientation affects views on issues such as gun control and abortion. Dan Kahan, Deputy Dean and Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law, points out that a democratic government is required to reach policy decisions on issues most citizens know little about. "You hear about a chemical the name of which is even complicated to pronounce, and you're supposed to have an opinion. How in a democracy do people form opinions about those things?" asks Kahan. He is leading a multi-disciplinary consortium of scholars, called the Cultural Cognition Project, to try answer to this and other questions about democratic decision-making.

The Cultural Cognition Project uses survey data to explore how people's cultural orientation (on scales of hierarchy-egalitarianism and individualism-solidarism) affects their views on specific political issues. Their surveys have shown that cultural orientation more strongly predicts people's perceptions of various risks than other individual characteristics, such as gender, race, or income. For example, they found that hierarchical individuals were more likely to think that abortion was a risky procedure, whereas people of egalitarian and individualistic worldviews perceived abortion as being relatively safe.

Project members are also thinking about how the phenomena they're studying affect the political process. Kahan argues, "Even though [citizens'] main interest is figuring out which political party or candidate or even set of laws will best promote their material interests... in the course of trying to figure that out, they are guided very much by cultural cues."

Visit the project's website to learn more...