The Nature Nurture of Democracy

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Tribal theory of democracy is what in principle would be nice if people did this objectively acquire perceive and evaluate information to form political opinions three providually support a political party. The nature nurture thing means that by temperament you like to hang around people that are kind of like that or they present a worldview which gels with the way you feel about things. You then adopt the position okay so what is their position on taxes and abortion and immigration or whatever and then you do the motivated reasoning. read it for our looks like it's backwards the way i see it maybe it comes out the other way when it's broadcast here anyway.

The democratic ideal demands that the citizenry think critically about matters of public import. Yet many Democrats and Republicans in the United States have fallen short of that standard because political tribalism motivates them to acquire, perceive and evaluate political information in a biased manner. The result is an electorate that is more extreme, hostile and willing to reject unfavorable democratic outcomes.

Shermer and Redmond discuss: why we have political duopoly (Duverger’s law) • parties vs. policies • Are we living in a post-truth, fake-news, alternative facts world? • How do we know political polarization is worse now than in the past? • acquiring, perceiving, and evaluating political information • evaluating: false political information, political numbers and arguments, claims of rigged election • whataboutism • cognitive responsibilities of citizenship • cognitive biases • political polarization • myside bias • numeracy vs. innumeracy • solutions to the polarization problem.

Timothy J. Redmond received his PhD in political science from the University at Buffalo. He is an award-winning educator and author of over one hundred articles on critical thinking and politics. He is a professor at Daemen University where he teaches a political science and history course for education students.