Chris C. Mooney's Blog, page 15

Republicans Versus Enlightenment: The Daily Telegraph

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(Image source: Daily Telegraph)

The Daily Telegraph is, in the UK context, a conservative paper. But a piece today, "Republicans turn their back on the Enlightenment," shows that UK conservatism and US conservatism are pretty different things:

The Grand Ol' Party (GOP), as the Republicans are known, has an uncomfortable relationship with scientific fact. Rick Santorum, a frontrunner in the nomination race, has said of a fellow candidate: "If he wants to believe he is the descendant of a monkey...

Forget the Christian Right: Are Fiscal Liberals and Fiscal Conservatives Psychologically The Same?

[image error] This is an introductory post by Everett Young.

Hi everybody. Nice to be here!

I'm Everett Young, and this is my first blog post ever. Anywhere!

I guess I'll start with a little about me. I got my Ph.D. in 2009 at Stony Brook University in political science. Stony Brook is known for its strength in political psychology, and that was indeed my specialization.

I was older than your average recent Ph.D recipient. I was 40 when I completed (I'm now 42). I had a couple of temporary teaching jobs, but b...

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...

Rick Santorum Misrepresents Climate Science. Again.

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(Wikimedia Commons/Gage Skidmore)

He just won't stop.

I just did a DeSmog piece about Santorum's recent remarks on global warming, uttered in New Hampshire. Here's a brief excerpt of his latest distortion:

I don't think any scientist in the world would suggest there isn't a variety of factors, and I think the vast majority of scientists would say there's probably a hundred factors that cause the climate to change.

And so why have we decided that this one particular factor, carbon dioxide, is in...

The Left and the Right: Physiology, Brain Structure and Function, and Attentional Differences

[image error]I haven't gotten the chance yet to read the new study, out of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, on cognitive and physiological differences between liberals and conservatives. But in anticipation of doing so, I just want to show how consistently these kinds of differences have been found by scientists working over the last five years.

Here is a list of peer reviewed papers that I've found that only discuss liberal-conservative differences in brain structure and function, in physiology, or in ...

Yet Another Peer Reviewed Study Finds Physiological and Cognitive Differences Between Liberals and Conservatives

I merely wanted to flag this now; we will comment much more on it later. From Eureka Alert:

In a series of experiments, researchers closely monitored physiological reactions and eye movements of study participants when shown combinations of both pleasant and unpleasant images. Conservatives reacted more strongly to, fixated more quickly on, and looked longer at the unpleasant images; liberals had stronger reactions to and looked longer at the pleasant images compared with conservatives.

"It's...

Are the Tea Party Candidates Anti-Intellectual? Yes. Part 4: Rhetoric and Governance

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(Wikimedia Commons/Gage Skidmore)

This is a guest post by Jon Winsor.

This is my fourth and last post dealing with whether the tea party candidates are anti-intellectual. Again, I think you can consider them anti-intellectual. But you have to be careful not to confuse anti-intellectualism with not being intelligent or resourceful. (See my first three posts here, here, and here.)

In this last post, I'll deal with the potential argument mentioned in my third post, that anti-intellectual rhetoric d...

Jumpstarting the Intersection With a New Focus—The Biology and Psychology of Politics—and Some New Contributors: Andrea Kuszewski and Everett Young

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(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

You may have noticed that this blog went very quiet late last year. Simply put, I  overbooked myself with traveling for talks and science communication trainings, and with finishing the new book. With all of these obligations and unending planes to catch, something had to give—and so the blog really slacked.

However,  there was no intention to discontinue it, and indeed, with the start of this year my plan is to enliven it dramatically.

For nearly a decade now, the...

The Enlightenment Country: New Bloggingheads Episode with Jonathan Moreno

It has been a while since I've done Bloggingheads.tv, but here's an episode of "Science Saturday" that I just recorded with Science Progress's own Jonathan Moreno–discussing his new book The Body Politic, the Obama administration's disgraceful move on Plan B emergency contraception, and much more. I am trying to figure out how to embed, but it isn't working so far. Here's a link, anyway:

Bloggingheads Chris Mooney Jonathan Moreno

Conservatives Show Stronger Automatic Responses to Negative Stimuli

[image error]The evidence on the differences between liberals and conservatives continues to roll in. This just out from PLoS One:

The Automatic Conservative: Ideology-Based Attentional Asymmetries in the Processing of Valenced InformationLuciana Carraro,* Luigi Castelli, and Claudia MacchiellaDipartimento di Psicologia dello Sviluppo e della Socializzazione, University of Padova, Padova
Research has widely explored the differences between conservatives and liberals, and it has been also...