Touting slogans such as âFacts have a well-known liberal biasâ, people on the Left have made clear they see themselves as the true heirs and defenders of the Enlightenment. New research, however, shows that theyâre just as deluded as everybody else.
One study, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, concluded that conservatives and liberals were to listening to opposing viewpoints on hot-button issues, such as same-sex marriage. In fact, they were willing to give up the chance to win money just to avoid the unpleasantness of hearing an opinion they disliked.
Read more: Effortless thinking
Sloppy thinking is at the root of many modern ills. We delve into nine key ideas that come naturally to us to find out why they are often so misguided
A meta-analysis of 41 studies recently published on the Social Science Research Network : there was no difference in partisanship between liberals and conservatives. As it turns out, âopen-mindedâ liberals are plagued by confirmation bias to the same extent as âclosed-mindedâ conservatives.
Advertisement
Consider Seattle, a city that and is proudly one of the most progressive â and well educated â in the US. A warm embrace of scientific reality doesnât come with the territory: Seattle isnât terribly fond of biotechnology, rejecting GMOs and even vaccines. Rwandaâs childhood polio vaccination rate is . As for other vaccines, including MMR, only than Washington State. If liberalism translated into embracing science, we would expect places like Seattle to have vaccination rates of 100 per cent. Blame for âalternative factsâ and âfake newsâ therefore, canât be pinned solely on the Left or Right. Both are culpable.
Alternative realities
This shouldnât come as a surprise to anyone who has followed politics in recent years. Society, fuelled by hyperpartisan news outlets and social media echo chambers, has created alternative realities for us to inhabit, full of self-reinforcing platitudes and free of any pesky information that might upset fragile world views.
That may explain the current US phenomenon of the ââ, as University of Chicago evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne called them, believing that â as he put it â âsome positions arenât just wrong, but [are] taboo to mentionâ.
The resulting absence of intellectual diversity has contributed to a toxic and intolerant American university culture. Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University, has documented . In 1990, liberal academic psychologists outnumbered conservatives 4 to 1; today, the ratio is roughly 14 to 1.
Similar ideological exclusion was on display during the recent March for Science. Some protesters held signs that read, âScience is not a liberal conspiracy.â
Thatâs absolutely true. It is equally true, however, that science is for everybody â liberals and conservatives, atheists and believers. Twisting science into a bludgeon for political opponents is a gross perversion of humanityâs best attempt at secular knowledge. Worse, it does grievous damage to the institution of science. Trust in science has been .
As it turns out, turning science into a political weapon has backfired spectacularly. The good news is that the first step toward solving any problem is to admit that we have one. These new studies are a good first step.
