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Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Political Opinions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Political Opinions. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Social relationships more important than hard evidence in partisan politics

phys.org
Dartmouth College
Originally posted November 13, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Three factors drive the formation of social and political groups according to the research: social pressure to have stronger opinions, the relationship of an individual's opinions to those of their social neighbors, and the benefits of having social connections.

A key idea studied in the paper is that people choose their opinions and their connections to avoid differences of opinion with their social neighbors. By joining like-minded groups, individuals also prevent the psychological stress, or "cognitive dissonance," of considering opinions that do not match their own.

"Human social tendencies are what form the foundation of that political behavior," said Tucker Evans, a senior at Dartmouth who led the study. "Ultimately, strong relationships can have more value than hard evidence, even for things that some would take as proven fact."

The information is here.

The original research is here.

Saturday, July 8, 2017

Israeli education minister's ethics code would bar professors from expressing political opinions

Yarden Skop
Haaretz
Originally posted June 10, 2017

An ethics code devised at Education Minister Naftali Bennett's behest would bar professors from expressing political opinions, it emerged Friday.

The code, put together by Asa Kasher, an ethics and philosophy professor at Tel Aviv University, would also forbid staff from calling for an academic boycott of Israel.

Bennett had asked Kasher a few months ago to write a set of rules for appropriate political conduct at academic institutions. Kasher had written the Israel Defense Forces' ethics code.
The contents of the document, which were first reported by the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper on Friday, will soon be submitted for the approval of the Council for Higher Education.

The article is here.