Moreover, the suggestion that the Republican party’s being less anti-science in the early 1970s than it is today is evidence that science is, under the right cultural circumstances, equally compatible with a conservative psychology says little, too, because the Republican and Democratic parties were very different then than they are today, and surely aren’t synonymous with right-left ideology. Even today they are STILL not synonymous with conservatism and liberalism, but they were much farther away then from being so.

The reason why more scientists are liberal can hardly be divorced from the question of why academics generally are liberal. If the psychological profile that produces curiosity and the desire to learn both makes one liberal and makes one more likely an academic, then its making one a scientist is barely in need of explanation.

Chris is right that some model must be proposed to explain HOW a cognitively flexible (rigid) psychology produces liberal (conservative) opinion formation. However, Jost and others (including me) have done exactly that. I agree more with some researchers’ ideas than others’, however, I don’t think it can be said any longer that the default assumption, against which we are Quixotically tilting, is that there are no psychological differences between libs and cons. The psychological differences are well documented, and the hypothesis that they are the RESULT of ideology rather than the other way around is by far the less parsimonious, more strained one.

The need to map out HOW, in greater and greater detail, psychological variables produce systematic left-right differences opinion formation is the task set before political psychology. However, the need to establish that, at least to some extent, it happens, has been surmounted in my opinion.

To me it seems like science stayed where it was while the political spectrum as a whole moved a whole lot to the right.

You can confirm or refute that by looking at the writings and research topics of the academia from the 50s and 60s and comparing them to the writings today. You’ll see that the viewpoints have not stayed the same. What was a more inclusive set of writing from every political landscape in the 50s and 60s started to lose voices on the right and gain voices on the far left in the 70s, lost a lot more in the 80s, but also some far left voices in the 90s and then lost many more on the right in the Aughts.

My theory is that the Beltway gobbled up a lot of right leaning thinkers who were left in the Aughts in response to 9/11. There are plenty of think tanks and contractors who would pay for their services, and pay better. Since they weren’t happy in the left leaning university environment, they left. Essentially, it was political and it is bad for science.

Some here seem to think that conservatism is innately tied to anti-science, religious ideas. That is a large segment of conservatives, but not all. Worse, some here conflate libertarians with conservatives, but since they conflate progressives with liberals, that’s understandable. Progressives are against liberal ideals and conservatives are against libertarian ideals, and vice versa, but that is the nature of a two-party system. Tribes form that have nothing to do with each other ideologically, but everything to do with each other politically.

To me it seems like science stayed where it was while the political spectrum as a whole moved a whole lot to the right.

Given the lack of ethics that should accompany our science, which, in my experience, ethics is a devoid consideration in the research or usage of science, I can not think of a place where liberalism would be more lacking.

Add to this a quick visit to the MIT campus, of which I am familiar, and you would be hard pressed to find these supposed liberals. They are down the street at that other university that shares TheCoop.

If true that most scientists are liberals, I fail to see their practice on display in modern science for sure. Of course, these are just my anecdotes not based on any particular study other than personal observation.

Political left will tend to argue that it’s circumstance.
Political right will tend to argue that it’s the poor person’s personal failing.
(apparently, citation needed)

Assuming this is true, can we stretch it to assume that political left will tend to look outward for answers, right will look inward?

Stretching further, does looking outwards gel well with the scientific view?

Hmm, just thinking

At this point it is difficult to draw any conclusion with certainty, but we CAN conclude that there is much more we need to know. That there are seemingly 5 variants or categories of ‘thinking’ is indicative that these are based in neuronal design. Indicative, not concretely understood. When you stop to think of it, it makes sense then that certain political thinking would be associated with certain other social group constructs. In fact, you should be surprised if it did not. It was not that long ago that there were black, white, and gray understandings of mental health. As I understand things we now think of things more as part of a continuum of mental health. Any given persons mental health is a blur of points on the continuum, rather than sitting stately like at some given point. So it should be with politics, and this explains why there are no hard and fast rules of who is which sect of what party. Generalizations though, should follow some general pattern of neuronal capacities.

As I have learned more about the universe around me, my political views have changed.

Quoting from the link given in #12:

“We do take note, however, of two
phenomena germane to our study: on the one hand, the conservative strategy of
attempting to influence public opinion on a wide variety of matters by starting thinktanks
– most independent of academe – funded by conservative foundations that would
build and then leverage ties to the increasingly consolidated mass media in order to get
their message across (Ricci 1994; Smith 1991; Stefancic and Delgado 1996); and on the
other hand, the rhetorical strategy that accompanied this institution-building effort of
calling into question the legitimacy of intellectuals on the other side of the political aisle
who would contest conservative claims.”