Science Forums 2

[CraigD]

Since I became acquainted with its ideas nearly a decade ago, I’ve tended to cast any “psychology of a political position” question in terms of the model proposed in George Lakoff’s “Moral Politics”. This model proposes that a fundamental driver of individuals’ politics is the relationship she or he learned to have with his or her parent(s), and divides these relationships into two major categories: Strict Father Morality, which goes with the political right; and Nurturant Parent Morality, which goes with the left.

Beginning with the assumption that most people don’t accept or reject evolution, climate change, or nearly any scientific theory through personal scientific testing or expert review of literature, but from authorities, such as science spokespeople and political and religious leaders, the question becomes one of choice in authorities

A prediction of the SF/NP model is that people disposed to SFM prefer their authority to come from individual people, while NPM prefers it to come from the consensus of many. I suspect (but, given the difficulty of testing hypotheses like these, can’t support very rigorously) that this difference is at the heart of an explanation of the correlation of acceptance of evolution, anthropogenic global warming, and science in general with the political left, and rejection of the same by the right, because authorities supporting these propositions are usually somewhat anonymous members of large, consensus-driven, non-hierarchal organizations (eg: the IPCC), while those rejecting them are usually charismatic individuals (eg: Rush Limbaugh).

This phenomena seems to me very robust (hard to alter), because scientific consensuses innately require many people agreeing to them in a peer-to-peer fashion, while denying them can be done by individual or small bands of “rebels” against the consensuses. Therefore, I doubt that very many people with SFM will accept scientific consensuses until these consensus become “common knowledge”, a process I suspect may take generations (30+ years), if it occurs at all.