Eric Merkley,  Anti-Intellectualism, Populism, and Motivated Resistance to Expert Consensus, Public Opinion Quarterly, Volume 84, Issue 1, Spring 2020

Anti-Intellectualism, Populism, and Motivated Resistance to Expert Consensus

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2021-08-13 10:30:10

Eric Merkley, Anti-Intellectualism, Populism, and Motivated Resistance to Expert Consensus, Public Opinion Quarterly, Volume 84, Issue 1, Spring 2020, Pages 24–48, https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfz053

Scholars have maintained that public attitudes often diverge from expert consensus due to ideology-driven motivated reasoning. However, this is not a sufficient explanation for less salient and politically charged questions. More attention needs to be given to anti-intellectualism—the generalized mistrust of intellectuals and experts. Using data from the General Social Survey and a survey of 3,600 Americans on Amazon Mechanical Turk, I provide evidence of a strong association between anti-intellectualism and opposition to scientific positions on climate change, nuclear power, GMOs, and water fluoridation, particularly for respondents with higher levels of political interest. Second, a survey experiment shows that anti-intellectualism moderates the acceptance of expert consensus cues such that respondents with high levels of anti-intellectualism actually increase their opposition to these positions in response. Third, evidence shows anti-intellectualism is connected to populism, a worldview that sees political conflict as primarily between ordinary citizens and a privileged societal elite. Exposure to randomly assigned populist rhetoric, even that which does not pertain to experts directly, primes anti-intellectual predispositions among respondents in the processing of expert consensus cues. These findings suggest that rising anti-elite rhetoric may make anti-intellectual sentiment more salient in information processing.

Citizens often disagree with scientific opinion on a wide range of issues that have important implications for policymaking. The bulk of scholarly attention has been dedicated to climate change. At some level, this is understandable: Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time, and one where we have struggled to find and implement long-term policy solutions. However, a focus on climate change potentially distorts our understanding of citizens’ acceptance of expert advice on other issues. A large majority of citizens in the United States agree with the climate change consensus, but opinion is heavily structured by ideology and partisanship. Thus, reasons for the failure of citizens to accept expert advice tend to focus on ideology-driven motivated reasoning ( Kahan, Jenkins-Smith, and Braman 2011; Lewandowsky and Oberauer 2016) anchored in psychological theories of information processing ( Kunda 1990; Ditto and Lopez 1992). But this is not obviously the case with other, less politicized issues (e.g., the safety of genetically modified organisms [GMOs], nuclear power, and water fluoridation), where experts and the public differ substantially. 1

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