Liberals more likely to believe in astrology than conservatives; Democrats more likely not to know that the Earth revolves around the Sun than Republicans.

Age and education have something to do with these counter-narratives that we call "facts."

Mind.Blown.

Yale Prof surprised to discover that Tea Party Conservatives are not morons and in fact are more scientifically literate than non-Tea Party.

Remarkable was the professor’s reaction on the Yale Law “Cultural Cognition Project” website:

I’ve got to confess, though, I found this result surprising. As I pushed the button to run the analysis on my computer, I fully expected I’d be shown a modest negative correlation between identifying with the Tea Party and science comprehension.

But then again, I don’t know a single person who identifies with the Tea Party.  All my impressions come from watching cable tv — & I don’t watch Fox News very often — and reading the “paper” (New York Times daily, plus a variety of politics-focused internet sites like Huffington Post & Politico).

I’m a little embarrassed, but mainly I’m just glad that I no longer hold this particular mistaken view.

Gorillas in the Mist.

Via Instapundit

//LIFE IN THE BUBBLE: Yale Prof. Surprised To Find That Tea Partiers Are Scientifically Literate, Since He Doesn’t Know Any. “All my impressions come from watching cable tv — & I don’t watch Fox News very often — and reading the ‘paper’ (New York Times daily, plus a variety of politics-focused Internet sites like Huffington Post and POLITICO). I’m a little embarrassed, but mainly, I’m just glad that I no longer hold this particular mistaken view.”

And here’s academia’s insularity, and the GOP’s media problem, both in a nutshell. . . .

Public Discourse and the Virtue of Prudence.

The foundation of every virtue is prudence because every virtue is an habit, and every habit is an act, and every act is a moment when the will makes a decision in the concrete and particular facts of the situation. According to Joseph Pieper, "The meaning of the virtue of prudence, however, is primarily this: that not only the end of human action but also the means for its realization shall be in keeping with the truth of real things. This in turn necessitates that the egocentric "interests" of man be silenced in order that he may perceive the truth of real things, and so that reality itself may guide him to the proper means for realizing his goal." (Josef Pieper, the Four Cardinal Virtues, p. 20.)

This Washington Examiner article provides a nice insight into how true self-knowledge plays a role in our knowledge of the truth, which, in turn, plays a role in the virtue of public discourse. The article examines the recent study by "partisan liberal" Jonathon Haidt which statistically demonstrates that not only are liberals deluded about their ability to understand the views of other people, but that conservatives actually have such an ability:

"A liberal can talk coherently about what the conservative view is because people like me actually do listen," New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said in an interview last year. "We don't think it's right, but we pay enough attention to see what the other person is trying to get at. The reverse is not true. ... The other side has dogmatic views."

Is this true? Are liberals like Krugman more open-minded than their conservative counterparts? Do they understand conservative views better than conservatives understand liberal views? University of Virginia psychology professor Jonathan Haidt has actually studied these questions, and the answers appear to be "no." In fact, the exact opposite seems to be the case.

In his new book, "The Righteous Mind," Haidt describes a study in which more than 2,000 Americans were asked to fill out questionnaires asking them how much they agreed with statements like this one: "I think it's morally wrong that rich children inherit a lot of money while poor children inherit nothing."

One-third of respondents were asked to fill out the questionnaire according to their own views. One-third were asked to fill it out as they thought a "typical liberal" would. And the last third were asked to fill out the survey as if they were a "typical conservative."

Haidt found that moderates and conservatives could accurately predict how liberals and conservatives would judge each statement. But liberals were far less capable of mirroring their ideological counterparts' thinking. Those describing themselves as "very liberal" did worst. Apparently, contra Krugman, the more liberal you are, the less able you are to understand other people's beliefs.

And:

Haidt, who was raised by liberal Jewish parents near New York City and has voted as "a partisan liberal" in every presidential election, later explains how this moral blindness can affect us all.

Liberals, Haidt argues, fail to appreciate the "moral capital" that successful societies have built up over years of cultural evolution. "Moral capital" includes the values, virtues and institutions in a society that "enable the community to suppress or regulate selfishness and make cooperation possible."

When liberals passed the well-meaning welfare programs of President Johnson's Great Society, they failed to anticipate how the new system "increased out-of-wedlock births and weakened African American families."

This blindness is not confined to American liberals like Krugman. Lord John Maynard Keynes, the intellectual father of liberal economics, said the following of himself and his college friends: "We claimed the right to judge every individual case on its merits, and the wisdom, experience, and self-control to do so successfully. ... We repudiated entirely customary morals, conventions, and traditional wisdom. We were, that is to say, in the strict sense of the term, immoralists."

And in case you thought Keynes might have gained some humility as he aged, he later added: "I remain, and always will remain, an immoralist."

Keynes and Krugman are just the latest in a long line of thinkers that suffer from what Haidt calls the "rationalist delusion," or the belief that one can simply deduce all moral truth through reason alone. "The rationalist delusion is not just a claim about human nature," Haidt writes. "It's also a claim that the rational caste (philosophers or scientists) should have more power." Or in the case of Keynes and Krugman, that economists should have more power.

Not that conservatives have any kind of monopoly on moral truth. Haidt believes that although conservatives "do a better job of preserving moral capital," liberals are better at noticing "certain classes of victims" and fighting corporate power. But conservatives who understand that such positive qualities exist in liberals should not necessarily expect reciprocation.

And that last part ties directly into the failure of public discourse in our culture. Without prudence - which is nothing more than "knowing the truth" - the virtues of justice and tolerance and temperance cannot properly function.

Via Mark Shea, who opines:

It certainly comports with my experience here in ultra-violet Blue Seattle. I suspect there are Mississippi Klansmen more open to new ideas and the blandishments of reality than some of the Lefties I’ve worked with at the University of Washington. I remember one woman handing me a book catalog full of stuff like the Federalist Papers and the writings of the Founding Fathers and her sole concern was not the actual content of the books, but simply whether or not the publisher was “conservative”. She had an absolutely primitive and visceral fear of contracting ritual impurity if The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin was purchased from a publisher with the wrong tribal allegiances.

His caution to conservatives not to by into tribal allegiance is dead on.

Science supports the conclusion that Leftists are more intolerant and more willing to change the narrative to make their team look good...

...so if you think you've noticed a wee propensity for those on the left to be narrow-minded and intellectually dishonest, such as by wildly changing good from bad depending on who the president is, then your experience is probably true.

According to the Daily Caller:

Pew’s new study echoes the results of many other reports and studies that show GOP supporters are better educated, more empathetic and more open to criticism than Democrats.

A March 12 Pew study showed that Democrats are far more likely that conservatives to disconnect from people who disagree with them.

“In all, 28% of liberals have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on SNS [social networking sites] because of one of these reasons, compared with 16% of conservatives and 14% of moderates,” said the report, tiled “Social networking sites and politics.”

The report also noted that 11 percent of liberals, but only 4 percent of conservatives, deleted friends from their social networks after disagreeing with their politics.

A March Washington Post poll showed that Democrats were more willing to change their views about a subject to make their team look good. For example, in 2006, 73 percent of Democrats said the GOP-controlled White House could lower gas prices, but that number fell by more than half to 33 percent in 2012 once a Democrat was in the White House.

In contrast, the opinions of GOP supporters were more consistent. Their collective opinion shifted by only a third, according to the data. In 2006, 47 percent in believed the White House could influence gas prices. By 2012, that number had risen to 65 percent up 17 points compared to the Democrats’ 40 point shift.


Read more:

Another "Conservatives are Stupid" Social Science Study.

From the Huffington Post:

Conservatives and liberals don't seem to agree about much, and they might not agree about recent studies linking conservatism to low intelligence and "low-effort" thinking.

As The Huffington Post reported in February, a study published in the journal "Psychological Science" showed that children who score low on intelligence tests gravitate toward socially conservative political views in adulthood--perhaps because conservative ideologies stress "structure and order" that make it easier to understand a complicated world.

Ouch.

And now there's the new study linking conservative ideologies to "low-effort" thinking.

"People endorse conservative ideology more when they have to give a first or fast response," the study's lead author, University of Arkansas psychologist Dr. Scott Eidelman, said in a written statement released by the university.

Does the finding suggest that conservatives are lazy thinkers?

"Not quite," Dr. Eidelman told The Huffington Post in an email. "Our research shows that low-effort thought promotes political conservatism, not that political conservatives use low-effort thinking."

For the study, a team of psychologists led by Dr. Eidelman asked people about their political viewpoints in a bar and in a laboratory setting.

Bar patrons were asked about social issues before blowing into a Breathalyzer. As it turned out, the political viewpoints of patrons with high blood alcohol levels were more likely to be conservative than were those of patrons whose blood alcohol levels were low.

But it wasn't just the alcohol talking, according to the statement. When the researchers conducted similar interviews in the lab, they found that people who were asked to evaluate political ideas quickly or while distracted were more likely to express conservative viewpoints.

"Keeping people from thinking too much...or just asking them to deliberate or consider information in a cursory manner can impact people's political attitudes, and in a way that consistently promotes political conservatism," Dr. Eidelman said in the email.

The study was published online in the journal "Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin."

So, we learn (a)that Conservatives drink more than liberals and (b) when people need to make a definite decision - such as when they are distracted by other issues - they make "conservative" decisions.

Are we supposed to be surprised that liberals (a) smoke more dope and (b) can't make decisions?