Conservatives Respond to the Science of Conservatism

Last week, I posted a tiny list of scientific articles–a small fraction of what’s actually out there–on liberal-conservative differences. The post got a lot of traffic, and drew some thoughtful responses. However, it also drew in some conservatives who responded very, very defensively.

I hope this is not how conservatives will continue to respond to this research, but it is not the first time I’ve seen this behavior. So I want to chronicle the unproductive responses here, if for no other reason than that I will have something to point to the next time this happens:

This is Just the Latest From Liberal Academia. As one commenter put it: “I bet MY tax dollars probably paid for this crap at liberal universities.” Probably some of the research was government funded, and very certainly much of it was conducted by liberals (because universities, and scientists, are overwhelmingly liberal). But that does not make the findings wrong or justify ad hominem attacks. It would be one thing to point out serious flaws in the research, but you can’t begin to do that if you just dismiss it because of where you perceive it to be coming from.

This Is Liberals Attacking Our Intelligence. One of the most striking phenomena was commenters leaping to the conclusion that the studies were about differences in intelligence between liberals and conservatives. This is very odd, in that there was nothing in my post that suggested a focus on intelligence in any of the papers. Why do conservatives, without even reading the work, jump to this (incorrect) conclusion, and literally pull it out of thin air?

And relatedly, but most troubling of all:

I Don’t Need to Read This Stuff. Going right along with misinterpreting the research and dismissing it was what I see as a striking lack of curiosity about it. I mean, if you are a person who follows politics, and someone cites science that may reveal the real reason why we have political differences at all, don’t you think you’d be kind of, um, intrigued and want to know more about what science is finding out? But some of the dismissive conservative commenters clearly were not.

The irony, of course, is that much of this research ultimately (in my view) makes conservatives look way better than liberals on multiple dimensions–most notably being more unified, more able to stick to a goal and get it accomplished, and never, ever willing to give in to the other side. But that’s a subject for another day…

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