‘I have faith in science and in God’: Common sense, cognitive polyphasia and attitudes to science in Nigeria
Abstract
This study, of modern common sense in Nigeria, combines questionnaires and interviews to examine the compatibility and incompatibility of religion and science. Nigeria is a large country with a complex diversity of religious, ethnic and cultural practices that condition the reception and elaboration of science in everyday life. We find evaluative attitudes to science structured as ‘progress’, ‘fear’ and ‘mythical image’. Scientific knowledge and religiosity have a direct bearing on expectations of progress and feeling of fear and worry about science; mythical image is independent of this. Nigerians trust both scientific and religious authorities in contrast to other social actors. Many of the results are consistent with the hypothesis of cognitive polyphasia of scientific and religious knowing manifesting as a ‘hierarchy’, when one form is elevated over the other; ‘parallelity’, when both serve separate functions; and ‘empowerment’, where one enhances the other.
Get full access to this article
View all access and purchase options for this article.
References
Allum N, Sturgis P, Tabourazi D, Brunton-Smith I (2008) Science, knowledge and attitude across cultures: A meta-analysis. Public Understanding of Science 17: 35–54.
Anderson U (2002) Working with spirits among Muslim Hausa in Nigeria. Working papers in cultural anthropology no. 11. Uppsala: Uppsala University.
Atofelekun A (2001) Cleric declares immunization un-Islamic. The Guardian, 25 October.
Balliet D, Van Lange PAM (2013) Trust, conflict, and cooperation: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin 139: 1090–1112.
Bauer MW, Allum N, Miller S (2007) What can we learn from 25 years of PUS survey research? Liberating and expanding the agenda. Public Understanding of Science 16(1): 79–95.
Bauer MW, Falade B (2014) Public understanding of science: The survey research. In: Bucchi M, Trench B (eds) Handbook of Communication of Science and Technology, vol. 2. London: Routledge, pp. 111–130.
Bauer MW, Gaskell G (2008) Social representations theory: A progressive research programme for social psychology. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 38(4): 335–353.
BBC (2005) In graphics: What the world thinks of God. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/04/world_what_the_world_thinks_of_god/html/1.stm (accessed 25 May 2013).
Billig M (1987) Arguing and Thinking: A Rhetorical Approach to Social Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cray D (2006) God vs science. Available at: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1555132,00.html (accessed 2 March 2010).
Denzin NK (2010) Moments, mixed methods, and paradigm dialogs. Qualitative Inquiry 16(6): 419–427.
Durkheim E (1912/2001) Elementary Forms of Religious Life (trans. Cosman C). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Ellis S (2008) The Okija shrine: Death and life in Nigerian politics. Journal of African History 49(3): 445–466.
EU (2005) Europeans, science and technology. Special Eurobarometer 224/Wave 63.1. Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_224_report_en.pdf (accessed 12 March 2015).
Falade BA (2014) Vaccination resistance, religion and attitudes to science in Nigeria. PhD Thesis, The London School of Economics and Political Science, London. Available at: http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/911/
Falade BA (2016) Living with Science and Miracles. Vaccines, Resistance, Religion, Science and Social Representations. Lagos, Nigeria: Promised Land Communications Ltd.
Festinger L (1962) A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, vol. 2. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Field A (2005) Discovering Statistics Using SPSS. London: SAGE.
Flick U (1992) Triangulation revisited: Strategy of validation or alternative? Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 22(2): 175–197.
Flick U (2000) Episodic interviewing. In: Bauer MW, Gaskell G (eds) Qualitative Researching with Text, Image and Sound. London: SAGE, pp. 75–102.
Gaskell G, Stares S, Allansdottir A, Allum N, Castro P, Esmer Y, et al. (2010) Europeans and Biotechnology in 2010: Winds of Change? Luxembourg: European Union.
Giddens A (2002) Runaway World: How Globalisation Is Reshaping Our Lives. London: Profile Books.
Gould SJ (1999) Non-overlapping magisteria. Skeptical Inquirer 23: 55–61.
Habermas J (2006) Religion in the public sphere. European Journal of Philosophy 14(1): 1–25.
ICG (2010) Northern Nigeria: Background to conflict. Africa report no. 168. Dakar, Senegal; Brussels: International Crisis Group.
Jovchelovitch S (2008) The rehabilitation of common sense: Social representations, science and cognitive polyphasia. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 38(4): 431–448.
Lidskog R (1996) In science we trust? On the relation between scientific knowledge, risk consciousness and public trust. Acta Sociologica 39(1): 31–56.
Luhmann N (1998) Familiarity, confidence and trust: Problems and alternatives. In: Gambetta D (ed.) Trust: Making and Breaking of Cooperative Relations. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 94–107.
Madugba A (2003) Polio vaccine: War without end. This Day, 16 November, p. 28.
MASTIC (2008) Malaysian science and technology information centre. Ministry of science, technology and innovation. The Public Awareness of Science & technology. Retrieved from: http://mastic.mosti.gov.my/documents/10156/b58042f5-bdd1-4d9e-a6e4-2ae58a9c7b89 (accessed 19 January 2017).
Midgley M (2003) Evolution as a Religion: Strange Hopes and Stranger Fears. Routledge.
Mooney C (2005) The Republican War on Science. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Moscovici S (1991/2014) The new magical thinking (translation of French original of 1991). Public Understanding of Science 23(7): 759–779.
Moscovici S (2000) Social Representations: Explorations in Social Psychology, vol. 41 (ed Duveen G). Cambridge: Polity Press.
NPC (2013) Population distribution by sex, state, LGAs and senatorial district. Retrieved from http://www.population.gov.ng/index.php/censuses (accessed 19 January 2017).
NSF (2014) National science foundation. science and engineering indicators. Chapter 7, Science and Technology: Public Attitudes and Understanding. Retrieved from https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind14/content/chapter-7/chapter-7.pdf (accessed 2 March 2015).
Neidhardt F (1993) Public as a communication system. Public Understanding of Science 2: 339–350.
Newton K (2001) Trust, social capital, civil society, and democracy. International Political Science Review 22(2): 201–214.
Nisbet MC, Scheufele DA (2009) What’s next for science communication: Promising directions and lingering distractions? American Journal of Botany 96(10): 1167–1778.
Ogundipe S (2004) Polio vaccine: Our boycott is lesser evil, says Shekarau. The Vanguard, 27 February, p.1.
Paden JN (2005) Muslim Civic Cultures and Conflict Resolution: The Challenge of Democratic Federalism in Nigeria. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Pardo R, Calvo F (2002) Attitudes towards science among the European public: A methodological analysis. Public Understanding of Science 11: 155–195.
Pardo R, Calvo F (2004) The cognitive dimension of public understanding of science: Methodological issues. Public Understanding of Science 13: 203–227.
Putnam RD (2007) E pluribus unum: Diversity and community in the twenty-first century. Scandinavian Political Studies 30: 137–174.
Shein PP, Li YY, Huang TH (2014) Relationship between scientific knowledge and fortune-telling. Public Understanding of Science 23(7): 780–796.
Shukla R, Bauer M (2007) The Science Culture Index (SCI): Construction and Validation. A Comparative Analysis of Engagement, Knowledge and Attitudes to Science across India and Europe. London; New Delhi, India: The Royal Society of London.
Siegrist M, Gutscher H, Earle TC (2005) Perception of risk: The influence of general trust, and general confidence. Journal of Risk Research 8(2): 145–156.
Slovic P (1999) Trust, emotion, sex, politics and science: Surveying the risk assessment battlefield. Risk Analysis 19(4): 689–701.
Smith DJ (2004) The Bakassi Boys: Vigilantism, violence, and political imagination in Nigeria. Cultural Anthropology 19(3): 429–455.
Sturgis P, Allum N (2004) Science in society: Re-evaluating the deficit model of public attitudes. Public Understanding of Science 13: 55–74.
Twenge JM, Campbell WK, Carter NT (2014) Declines in trust in others and confidence in institutions among American adults and late adolescents, 1972–2012. Psychological Science 25: 1914–1923.
World Values Survey (2015) Longitudinal data files. Available at: http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWVL.jsp (accessed 03 March 2015).
Wynne B (1982) Rationality and Ritual: The Windscale Inquiry and Nuclear Decisions in Britain. Chalfont St Giles: British Society for the History of Science.
Ziman J (1991) The public understanding of science. Science, Technology, and Human values 16(1): 99–105.
Biographies
Bankole A. Falade is a Scientist, Journalist and Social Psychologist with interests in communication and social change; public engagement with science and religion; and representations of health and illness in Africa, media studies and automated text analysis. He is a Fellow of the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Martin W. Bauer is Professor of Social Psychology and Research Methodology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He investigates the public understanding of science and ‘common sense’ in a comparative perspective and in its relationship to new technical and scientific developments. Recent books include Atoms, Bytes and Genes – Public Resistance and Techno-Scientific Responses, New York, Routledge (2015).
Cite article
Cite article
Cite article
OR
Download to reference manager
If you have citation software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice
Information, rights and permissions
Information
Published In
Article first published online: February 14, 2017
Issue published: January 2018
Keywords
PubMed: 28194998
Authors
Metrics and citations
Metrics
Journals metrics
This article was published in Public Understanding of Science.
View All Journal MetricsArticle usage*
Total views and downloads: 1914
*Article usage tracking started in December 2016
Altmetric
See the impact this article is making through the number of times it’s been read, and the Altmetric Score.
Learn more about the Altmetric Scores
Articles citing this one
Receive email alerts when this article is cited
Web of Science: 22 view articles Opens in new tab
Crossref: 31
- Dialogicality and Conspiracy Theory: The Coexistence of Conspiracist and Non‐Conspiracist Beliefs
- Science, Not Scientists: Reflections on Science, Culture, and Their Mediators
- Use of the word “evolution” in the time of a global pandemic
- The four “R”s: Strategies for tailoring science for religious publics and their prices
- Covid-19 in Africa: Societal and Economic Implications
- Variety and variation in lived worlds: Defining and exploring a new marketing research agenda based on an ethnography of complementary and alternative medicine consumption
- Representations of Mental Illness in a Ga Community in Southern Ghana
- How are relying on religion and on science to make sense of the world associated with health-related resources and behaviors and well-being?
- Variété et variations des mondes vécus : définition et exploration d’un nouveau programme de recherche en marketing, à partir d’une ethnographie de la consommation de médecines alternatives et complémentaires
- ‘Where are the graves of coronavirus victims?’ Beliefs, conspiracy theories and representations of COVID-19 in Africa
- View More
Figures and tables
Figures & Media
Tables
View Options
Access options
If you have access to journal content via a personal subscription, university, library, employer or society, select from the options below:
I am signed in as:
View my profileSign out
I can access personal subscriptions, purchases, paired institutional access and free tools such as favourite journals, email alerts and saved searches.
loading institutional access options
Alternatively, view purchase options below:
Purchase 24 hour online access to view and download content.
Access journal content via a DeepDyve subscription or find out more about this option.
