S02E04 | Understanding formation and transformation of political beliefs from the lens of a Political Scientist w/ Prof. Bert Bakker

Info Under The Radar

In the fourth episode of the second season of IUTR, we are talking about how do beliefs form and what leads to their transformation among other things from the lens of Political Beliefs. We also looked into who are politically sophisticated people (for conciseness referred to as sophisticated during the conversation) and why they tend to be more aligned with their political parties.
We invited Dr. Bert Bakker, who is a Political Scientist and an Associate Prof. of Political Communication and Journalism at the University of Amsterdam to understand this very interesting and complicated subject.

(07:15) - What is a belief in the first place and how do beliefs are formed?

(14:40) - Types of beliefs and how beliefs are seen as a network

(29:15) - Can we quantitatively measure the change in our beliefs?

(35:35) - What leads to change in beliefs and what does it mean to be politically “sophisticated”?

(40:45) - Why do politically sophisticated individuals tend to vote on party lines?

(43:55) - “More sophisticated someone is, less is their willingness to change their beliefs” but why?

(49:45) - Psychological reasoning behind why sophisticated people might not look to the other side of issues they believe in (i.e. people on the left not willing to understand ideas of the right and vice-versa) and why it's hard to change their beliefs?

(57:15) - What leads to drastic shifts in the religious or political beliefs of individuals who grow up in a household of certain beliefs?

(63:00) - If you are atheist or agnostic, who do you look up to when things are going bad in life.

Reach out to Prof. Bakker on his Twitter: @bnbakker
You can find all the work Bert is doing with The Hot Politics Lab: https://www.hotpolitics.eu/
Bert’s personal website: http://www.bertbakker.com/

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