Cultural cognition is the tendency to read facts and evidence in whatever way fits the values and group identities you already hold. It is widespread, but it is neither universal nor inevitable. Psychological tendencies describe common patterns, not laws, and people with moderate views, strong epistemic norms, or plain awareness of the bias resist it or correct for it in part. Treating the tendency as destiny overgeneralizes, and I keep that exception in view.
The practical question is how a society moves beyond identity-driven reasoning, and the answer is not better arguments. Durable change comes from removing the signals that trigger partisan defensiveness and from messengers trusted across group lines: scientists, community leaders, and peers who can speak without signaling a side. A large middle does not read the world through a political lens at all, and institutions and media should give it more voice by rewarding nuance over outrage. The shifts in public views on smoking, same-sex marriage, and sexual harassment show the pattern: evidence took hold once social norms, trusted messengers, and institutions reinforced it. That is also why arguing someone out of a comforting belief rarely works, as Comfort and Biases and Pseudoscience describe, while norms and institutions do.