The Competition for Worldviews: Values, Information, and Public Support for Stem Cell Research

When it comes to public opinion about controversial issues related to science and technology, many policy makers and scientists assume that increased public understanding of science will lead to increased public support. Yet, instead of a fully informed and deliberative public, past research indicates that it is more likely that the public by nature is ‘miserly’, with individuals relying on their value predispositions and only the information most readily available to them from the mass media and other sources in order to formulate an opinion about science controversy. Building on this latter ‘accessibility’ or ‘memorybased’ model of opinion formation, this study tests the relationship between an increase in available information—or increasing ‘awareness’—and public support for embryonic stem cell research. An analysis of national survey data collected in the USA during the fall of  and the fall of  indicates that although an increase in awareness leads to an increase in support for research, both religious and ideological value predispositions strongly moderate the impact of awareness. The controversy in the USA over government funding for embryonic stem cell research is representative of the competition among various institutions for the worldviews of the public, pitting religion against the scientific community, universities, and industry. Strategic actors linked to these competing institutions have struggled to marshal momentum for their preferred policy outcomes by influencing public opinion, and the mass media has played a key role in the competition for the public’s support. A central assumption of the scientific community and other funding advocates has been that increasing public understanding of the issue via the media will automatically translate into increased public support for research. Greater scientific understanding, it is assumed, will ensure that the public makes ‘proper’ judgments about science, that is assessments in line with The author would like to thank Cary Funk of the Virginia Common Wealth University for providing access to the VCU Life Sciences Survey data analyzed in this study. The article was first submitted to IJPOR September , . The final version was received May , , but some additions were made in December . T H E C O M P E T I T I O N F O R W O R L D V I E W S  those of scientists. This reasoning is offered not only in the context of the stem cell debate, but has been voiced relative to many science controversies. The scientific community’s perspective is based on the presumed existence of a fully informed public where opinion consists of individual judgments about an issue arrived at only after conscious and knowledgeable deliberation. Previous research, however, paints this ideal as unlikely, documenting extremely low levels of public knowledge across a wide range of policy matters. Instead of a fully informed and deliberative public, past studies indicate that it is much more likely that the public by nature is ‘miserly’, with individuals relying primarily on their existing value predispositions and only the information most readily available to them from the mass media in order to formulate an opinion about complex and remote policy disputes. In order to demonstrate and test this opinion process, the current study therefore focuses on the institutional struggle to define policy relative to stem cell research, the impact of increasing information, or ‘awareness’, on opinion, and the moderating role of values in shaping public support for research. CONNECTING INSTITUTIONS WITH INDIVIDUAL-LEVEL OPINION FORMATION THE INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT OF OPINION-FORMATION At the macro-level, the controversy over stem cell research is the outcome of conflict and cooperation among a number of central institutions in contemporary American society including science, Christian religion, the bureaucratic state, the market, and the university. The driving logic of science is based in its ‘exceptionalism’: when it comes to research, the scientific community believes it should be mostly free from direct regulation and political control (Bimber & Guston, ). The logic of scientific exceptionalism is complemented by the laissez faire logic of the market, with stem cell research considered vital to the success of the biomedical industry and the economic competitiveness of the USA; by the bureaucratic agencies that fund science, where scientist-administrators would prefer that their ‘expert’ oversight of the scientific community take place behind closed-doors; and by universities, the direct beneficiaries of federal funding. Against these other institutions, the logic of institutionalized religion stands in opposition to stem cell research. The roots of religious opposition can be understood 1 The emphasis in this study on Christian religion does not mean to discount the important position of other religions relative to stem cell research. Rather the emphasis simply reflects the status of Christianity as the overwhelmingly dominant organized religion in the USA, with more than  percent of the U.S. public identifying themselves as either Protestant or Catholic. 2 There are other institutional structures that may oppose embryonic stem cell research on slightly different grounds than religion, and these additional institutional structures are discussed in the conclusion to the paper.  I N T E R N A T I O N A L J O U R N A L O F P U B L I C O P I N I O N R E S E A R C H in the context of a wider institutional competition for the Weltanschauungen, or worldviews of the public (Berger & Luckmann, ). Religious institutions are a dominant source of worldviews, especially in the USA. In fact, American religiosity and support for religion as an institution are unique national characteristics (Pew, ). Yet religious belief, like other meaning structures for interpreting the world, is precarious. A religious individual’s ‘world taken for granted’ must be legitimated over and over again, not only in competition with other religions, but also with other institutions of modern society, such as science, that offer competing views. According to Berger and Luckmann (), institutions therefore contend for the allegiances of potential consumers of Weltanschauungen. This need in modern society to constantly re-legitimate the religious worldview explains in part why religious institutions, especially Catholic and evangelicalaffiliated organizations, have been the most opposed to human embryonic stem cell research. From a traditional Christian perspective, human life is created in God’s image. Catholic and evangelical elites consider embryos to be human beings, ‘a human life worthy of full moral protection from the moment of conception,’ (NBAC, , p. ). When scientists use or create embryos only to destroy them for the purpose of extracting stem cells, Catholic and evangelical elites view scientists as taking on the role of God, violating divine will. Therefore, according to religious advocates, use of government tax dollars to fund research would make ‘all citizens complicit in this research,’ (NBAC, , p. ), de-legitimating the Christian worldview, and ultimately threatening the authority of religious institutions. This religious perspective stands in sharp contrast to the scientific view that generally defines a ‘human being not as a miraculous act of divine creation, but rather as the sum of a series of material causes that can be understood and manipulated by human beings’ (Fukuyama, , p. ). The conflict between religion and other institutions over stem cell research has catalyzed organized opposition from religious pro-life groups, and has given rise to a germinal social movement of research advocates. The mass media have been the chief arena where these social movements have struggled to define the stem cell debate in terms that favor policies consistent with their own particular logic or rules. Pro-research elites assume that they need only focus programmatically on public communication efforts based on a common assumption that enhanced science knowledge enables individuals to sort through the misinformation, ‘bad’ science, and extraordinary claims that emerge during political disputes over science and technology. In other words, a scientifically literate public is assumed to be more appreciative of science and technology, and more supportive of science as an institution (Bodmer, ). In contrast, religious research opponents have sought to mobilize the public by attempting to define stem cell research in media coverage as a moral issue, emphasizing certain considerations that are likely to promote public opposition to research (Nisbet, Brossard, & Kroepsch, ). T H E C O M P E T I T I O N F O R W O R L D V I E W S 