Archives for January 2023

Kubin, E., Puryear, C., Schein, C., & Gray, K. (2021). Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(6). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2008389118

(APA 7: I was unable to add spaces/ the indentation.)

THESIS: The respect-inducing potential of morl opinions is more than that of facts. Respect from political opponents is most prominent for issue-related and harm-based personal experience-involving arguments.

How the article distinguishes between statements based on personal experience and based on facts?

1. Personal experience is thought to be less convincing than facts by people who were initially surveyed.
2. However, after doing a type of sentiment analysis of YouTube comments, videos involving personal experience got more positive comments.
3. This led to the conslusion that personal experiences can be more convincing.
4. More research found harm-based relevant experiences to be most effective.

The authors came up with a model that facts can appeal to rationality and when combined with personal experience, command more respect than without experience.

1. People responded facts are more convincing than personal experience.
2. Experiment with YOUTUBE comments found the opposite to be true.
3. Harm-based, relevant, personal experience was found to be most effective.
4. For me, this could have some applicability in the introduction and philosophical parts of my book where I try to empower readers with the confidence to explore mathematics.
5. However, for some chapters, facts could be more important.

1. It was interesting to see that people thought that facts can be more convincing than personal experience.

The expected process of scientific research is explained.

Tale of two researchers:

One has negative experience about video games and writes negative article after research.

Other has positive experience and writes nice research.

Positionality: Aware of one’s biases and opinions.

Worldview should be explained before researching.

I found the following image useful:

Examples in second video and conclusion in video were also nice.