It’s one thing for me to flush a toilet without knowing how it operates, and another for me to favor (or oppose) an immigration ban without knowing what I’m talking about. Sloman and Fernbach cite a survey conducted in 2014, not long after Russia annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea. Respondents were asked how they thought the U.S. should react, and also whether they could identify Ukraine on a map. The farther off base they were about the geography, the more likely they were to favor military intervention.

. . .“As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding,” Sloman and Fernbach write.

—Elizabeth Kolbert, “Why Facts Don’t Change Minds” in The New Yorker