Better Knowledge of Evolution Leads to Greater Acceptance of the Concept

Prevailing theories about evolution state that belief in the concept is tied only to a person's politics, religion or both. But according to new research out of the University of Pennsylvania published in BioScience , the journal of the American Institute of Biology, whether Americans accept or reject the subject also depends on how well they understand it.   "We find the traditional relationship between your religious beliefs and evolution, and between your political beliefs and evolution, but we also find that those are not the only factors that matter," said Deena Weisberg , a senior fellow in Penn's psychology department in the School of Arts and Sciences. "They do matter, but if you know more about evolutionary theory, if you understand it better, you're more likely to accept it."  That's positive news for educators, said Michael Weisberg , professor and chair of Penn's philosophy department, also in the School of Arts and Sciences. "For controversial topics - evolution, climate change, vaccines - no doubt the controversy is explained in relation to a person's identity. But actual knowledge of the science seems to play a role, and we've documented that here for evolution for the first time in a representative population." Previous work in this realm typically asked black-and-white questions with just two answer options or tested a non-representative sample such as a group of recruited high-school students. The Penn team thought that nuance would be important in this conversation, so they created a survey about evolutionary concepts like variation and natural selection using carefully selected language.