In 2013, a team of researchers held a math test. The exam was administered to over 1,100 American adults,
and designed, in part, to test their ability to evaluate sets of data. Hidden among these math problems were two almost identical questions.
Both problems used the same difficult data set, and each had one objectively correct answer.
The first asked about the correlation between rashes and a new skin cream. The second asked about the correlation between crime rates
and gun control legislation. Participants with strong math skills
were much more likely to get the first question correct. But despite being mathematically identical,
the results for the second question looked totally different. Here, math skills weren’t the best predictor
of which participants answered correctly. Instead, another variable the researchers had been tracking came into play:
political identity. Participants whose political beliefs aligned
with a correct interpretation of the data were far more likely to answer the problem right.
