Half of Dutch young people prefer “common sense” to science
Call it intuition or call it gut feeling: Dutch young people say they place great value on their “common sense”. Half of them even say they trust it more than scientific research. “Science has been battling preconceived ideas for centuries.”
Last week, the latest PISA study led to a flood of news reports about the dire state of Dutch young people’s language skills. Shocking, certainly, but those who delve a little deeper into the results of the large-scale study will find yet another statistic in which the Netherlands languishes near the bottom. Almost half (47 per cent) of Dutch 15-year-olds (strongly) agree with the statement that we should “rely more on our common sense and less on scientific studies”.
“A kind of counter-Enlightenment,” is how psychologist Bastiaan Rutjens it describes. “According to historical research, we have been heading in that direction for some time now.” The fact that gut feelings are now also gaining ground among young people at the expense of science therefore comes as little surprise to him. “Especially when a term like ‘common sense’ is used. It carries a certain connotation of deliberation, of having thought something through carefully.”
But similar concepts – such as intuition or gut feeling – are also increasingly being preferred over science, research suggests. To better understand this phenomenon, Rutjens recently introduced the “Youniversalism” scale. It measures the extent to which someone believes that the truth can be felt from within, and that scientific evidence can therefore be set aside. He gives health influencers who spread misinformation about sunscreen as an example: “Scientific consensus is viewed with a great deal of scepticism, while following your ‘own feelings’ is actively encouraged.”
Settled knowledge
It is a worrying development, says university professor of science and society in an international perspective and former Minister of Education, Culture and Science Robbert Dijkgraaf. “I am quite shocked to see how exceptionally the Netherlands scores on this. We really do rely a great deal on our common sense here.”
But what exactly is common sense? Dijkgraaf defines it as a form of knowledge “that everyone feels they have exactly enough of. Not too much and not too little. It is therefore a very settled kind of knowledge. You never need to upgrade your common sense.” Science, by contrast, he emphasises, is about what we do not yet know, about learning new things. The fact that Dutch young people now seem to have so little interest in that, according to the university professor, points to a lack of curiosity.
Battle
That cannot be a pleasant realisation for the countless researchers working at universities who strive to acquire new knowledge through their work. But according to Dijkgraaf, science has been battling for centuries against preconceived ideas that seem intuitively plausible but are simply not true. “I still find it difficult to believe that the sun does not revolve around the Earth, but you have to step outside your comfort zone. Curiosity is a muscle we need to keep exercising.”
Now that muscle seems to be getting weaker, the conflict between science and common sense is intensifying. And that is despite the fact that scientific knowledge is now applied in almost every area of society, Dijkgraaf explains. “Science plays a very important role in political decision-making, which society then responds to. The conflict between a scientific report and what you as a citizen thought you knew to be true has a very real political impact. For example, on how we manage a nature reserve or which medicines are made available.”
Postmodern era
Social media are also likely to play a role in the rise of personal gut feelings, Rutjens expects. After all, filter bubbles make it easier than ever to surround yourself with like-minded people. Yet he sees the broader social zeitgeist as the main explanation: “We live in a postmodern, hyper-individualistic era in which trust in institutions and belief in an objective truth are being called into question. People therefore rely on their own common sense, because it is the only anchor they have left. But when scientific insights do not immediately feel intuitive, it becomes harder to accept them.”
Because how an atom works, or the cosmos, or the DNA in the human body? “We have absolutely no intuitive understanding of those things,” says Dijkgraaf. “And that is when common sense can suddenly be very misleading.” In fact, sometimes scientific advice can even seem almost unnatural, Rutjens says. “Take vaccinations. You might think: why would you let someone inject you with a piece of a virus? That feels like a strange concept. So if you rely on your own common sense, you can end up getting confused.”
And so we should seize on this kind of research as an opportunity to take a critical look at the future of education, Dijkgraaf argues. “This is a wake-up call. We need to keep nurturing curiosity among students and pupils, because we desperately need it. How we deal with knowledge at a meta level needs to have a place in the curriculum.”
