A study performed by the University of Alabama (UA) says that conservatives are less likely to be interested in new scientific data.
Dr. Alexa Tullett, an assistant professor of psychology at UA, authored a project called “Is ideology the enemy of inquiry? Examining the link between political orientation and lack of interest in novel data.” She gave participants data on three topics: the justness of the world, the efficacy of social safety nets, and the benefits of social media.
The conservatives were less interested in empirical data and more skeptical of science. I could’ve told her that, but it’s good to have data to confirm these suspicions.
Tullett said:
“One reason for increases in political polarization may be that people aren’t always speaking the same language. There seem to be epistemological differences between liberals and conservative. They disagree about the value of scientific evidence, and if you’re relying on different types of evidence, you’re less likely to come to an agreement.”
“Take an issue like gun control: If you were to present people with the issue of gun control, and have anecdotal accounts, expert opinion and scientific studies, our data suggest that liberals would be more likely to care about the scientific study than conservatives. That might have implications for what kind of evidence each pole of the political continuum finds persuasive.”
People learn their political knowledge from many places. Empirical scientific data is the most neutral source you can use. Opinion pieces may be informative, but people can think for themselves if they look at the data alone. Many news outlets try to tell you how to feel about the stories. (Cough) Fox News! (Cough)
There are some critics who are against this study. Science 2.0 said:
“The authors say empirical data is important and that their results mean conservatives don’t trust it, which will make liberal science blogger cheer, but it will show they haven’t read the paper. The political issues they picked were too broad and social media beliefs tell the public almost nothing.”
“Ironically, this paper shows exactly why conservatives don’t trust academic psychology – and because liberals know the fix is in when it comes to partisan spin from academia, they have begun to assume that the bias is also evident in vaccines, biology and energy, and no science can be trusted.”
We all know that there are plenty of conservative science-deniers out there. I agree with her findings.
Here is a video discussing how liberal and conservative brains are different:
