Chris C. Mooney's Blog, page 6

Great Review of The Republican Brain in The Financial Times

[image error]James Wilsdon, a professor of science and democracy at Sussex University who formerly directed the Science Policy Centre at the Royal Society, reviewed The Republican Brainin the Financial Timesover the weekend. It is a very positive review. And because Wilsdon has actually read the book, he gets the nuances involved:

Mooney is careful to avoid a slide into reductionism; repeatedly emphasising that while insights from psychology, neuroscience and even genetics are relevant to understanding the...

New Study: Second Stage Thinking Erodes Religious Belief

[image error]This paper in Scienceis sure to contribute a great deal to the ongoing shakeup that political (and religious) neuroscience is causing:

Analytic Thinking Promotes Religious Disbelief


Will M. Gervais*,
Ara Norenzayan*

Scientific interest in the cognitive underpinnings of religious belief has grown in recent years. However, to date, little experimental research has focused on the cognitive processes that may promote religious disbelief. The present studies apply a dual-process model of cognitive pro...

A Response to Ronald Lindsay Regarding The Republican Brain

[image error]Most people who don’t like my new book The Republican Brain show little evidence of having read it.So it has naturally been hard to find intellectually serious critics—critics who don’t misrepresent the argument in order to attack a strawman.

The longest, fairest, and most substantive critique I’ve gotten from someone who has actually read the book is from the philosopher and ethicist Ronald Lindsay. As it happens, he is also my part-time boss, as he is president and CEO of the Center for Inqu...

Emotional Logic: How We Think (Without Thinking)

[image error]This is a guest post by Dylan Otto Krider,a skeptic, journalist and science fiction author whose work on the politicization of science has appeared in Skeptic, Dissent and other outlets (www.dylanottokrider.com). Chris Mooney is on book tour.

When the victims of hurricane Katrina started to flood into Houston, I drove to the Astrodome to volunteer to help the refugees, over the objections of friends who insisted security would make it impossible. As it turned out, the entire registration proce...

Diagram This: Mitt is Whatever You Want Him to Be

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A "Romney Diagram"

This is a guest post by Dylan Otto Krider,a skeptic, journalist and science fiction author whose work on the politicization of science has appeared in Skeptic, Dissent and other outlets (www.dylanottokrider.com).

Liberals often talk about conservatives as living in a parallel universe. When Mitt Romney speaks, he does seem to be communicating by different rules. Some favorite Romney lines are so demonstrably untrue, several high profile progressives have resorted to diagrammi...

Appearance on MSNBC’s Live with Thomas Roberts, Washington Post Outlook Piece on the Republican Brain

Yesterday I was on MSNBC to discuss the book–video pasted here:

In addition, the Washington Post Outlook section has run a piece by me about the book this weekend. It’s entitled “Liberals and Conservatives Don’t Just Vote Differently. They Think Differently.” You can read it here.

Scientific References for My Talk at U.C. Davis

I’m speaking at U.C. Davis today about The Republican Brain–interested scientifically minded folks can go to these two links to read about the latest research on the science of ideology.

Scientists Pushing Back at Conservative Distortions

[image error]This is a guest post by Dylan Otto Krider,  a skeptic, journalist and science fiction author whose work on the politicization of science has appeared in Skeptic, Dissent and other outlets (www.dylanottokrider.com).

Back in 2002, when I wrote for the Houston Press, Rush Limbaugh devoted a lot of air time to a scientific study that showed that oil was seeping up from lower depths into higher reservoirs in the Gulf of Mexico, and relatively quickly in geologic time. There was also some...

My Appearance on the Bill Press Show

Video here; this was the most thorough and wide ranging TV interview I've yet been able to do, so I was glad to be on for about 15 minutes:

The Paradoxical Centrist Bias of the Political Left

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(Paul Krugman, who has denounced the "Cult of Centrism")

This is a guest post by Dylan Otto Krider,  a skeptic, journalist and science fiction author whose work on the politicization of science has appeared in Skeptic, Dissent and other outlets (www.dylanottokrider.com).

The latest psychological research cited by Chris Mooney suggest that liberals and conservatives have a particular inclination toward different psychological traits. Conservatives tend to be more dogmatic and intolerant of...