A Metacognitive Strategy for Dealing with Political Dogmatism

Sergiu Spatan

The ALEF research group (Cluj-Napoca, Romania) announces an online talk by Sergiu Spătan (Dresden University of Technology) entitled "A Metacognitive Strategy for Dealing with Political Dogmatism". The talk is part of the group's regular seminar and takes place on Friday, MAY 20, 18.00 EEST. Please write to [email protected] or check our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ALEF-100692348488914) if you want to participate. For more information about ALEF, as well as the schedule for the seminar in the 2021-2022 spring semester, please visit https://sites.google.com/view/alefgroupcluj.

Here is the abstract of the talk:

Recent global events have revealed the worst demons of our epistemic nature. The reluctance of many people to believe in human-induced climate change, the rise of authoritarianism in some Western countries and the proliferation of beliefs in conspiracy theories have highlighted the dangers of political dogmatism (the unwillingness to engage with views that conflict with one’s own political beliefs). Recent studies have shown that political dogmatism is associated with metacognitive insensitivity - the inability to update one’s epistemic confidence levels in accordance with one’s cognitive performances. The aim of this talk is to propose a new strategy for dealing with political dogmatism, based on a three stage intervention for improving metacognitive sensitivity: (i) metacognitive knowledge (understanding the inner workings of the feeling of confidence); (ii) metacognitive monitoring (distinguishing between the epistemic and the non-epistemic influences on the feeling of confidence); (iii) metacognitive regulation (calibrating the confidence level in accordance with the available evidence). To my mind, the best way to deal with political dogmatism is to improve one’s capacity of discriminating between the epistemic and the non-epistemic factors that influence one’s confidence. In other words, instead of trying to persuade somebody of a view that contradicts their conviction, help them develop their metacognitive sensitivity, so that they can understand by themselves when to doubt, when to worry, and when to feel certain.